Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger
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had been deemed a public necessity because men had protested they were being driven from their homes by washing which, on account of the incessant rain, seemed to hang there forever. A stall cost only twopence an hour, less expensive than heating water at home, and there were always women waiting in line. But the tram system, which was on the point of being liquidated in spite of its low fares, forbade laundry baskets, and, consequently, those who were not within walking distance—and they were the ones who needed it most—were deprived of its use.
Throughout the slum section I saw drunken, sodden women whose remaining, snag-like teeth stuck down like fangs and protruded from their sunken mouths. When I asked one of the executive officers of the corporation why they were so much more degraded than the men, he replied, “Oh, the women of Glasgow are all dirty and low. They’re hopeless.”
“But why should this be?” I persisted.
His only answer was, “It’s their own fault.”
Bill and I walked about late at night, overwhelmed by the unspeakable poverty. The streets were filled with fighting, shiftless beggars. Hundreds of women were abroad, the big shawls over their heads serving two purposes: one, to keep their shoulders warm; the other, to wrap around the baby which each one carried. It was apparent that their clothing consisted only of a shawl, a petticoat, a wrapper, and shoes. Older children were begging, “A ha’penny for bread, Missus, a ha’penny for bread.”
It was infinitely cold, dreary, and disappointing—so much talk about more wages and better subsistence, and here the workers had it and what were they getting?—a little more light, perhaps, a few more pennies a day, the opportunity to buy food a little more cheaply, a few parks in which they could wander, a bank where their money earned a fraction more interest. But as soon as they passed beyond the border of another baby, they were in exactly the same condition as the people beyond the realm of municipal control.
Municipal ownership was one more thing to throw in the discard.
One dull, rainy day, glad to leave behind the shrill, crying voices of the beggars of Glasgow, we boarded a horrid cattle boat bound for Antwerp. The children were all seasick as we bounced and tossed over the North Sea. It was something of a job to handle the three of them with no nurse, especially when the storm threw them out of their beds on to the cabin floor. Fortunately they suffered no fractures, although twenty-six horses in the hold had to be shot because their legs had been broken.
We arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris at the end of another dismal, bewildering day—toot-toot! steam, luggage, brusque snatching by blue-smocked, black-capped porters, all looking like villains, jam at the ticket gate, rackety taxi to a hotel on the Left Bank.
Paris seemed another Glasgow, more like a provincial village than a great metropolis. The atmosphere of petty penury destroyed my dreams of Parisian gaiety and elegance; even the French children were dressed in drab, gloomy, black aprons. Within a few days we had sub-let an apartment on the Boulevard St. Michel across from the Luxembourg Gardens where Grant and Peggy could play. It was four flights up, and the cold penetrated to the marrow of our bones. We could put tons of briquets into the little fireplaces and never get any heat. All the family went into flannel underwear, the first since my early childhood.
I presented Stuart to the superintendent of the district lycée. He demanded a birth certificate, and I had none.
“But without it how can I tell where he was born or how old he is?” The official seemed to imply that Stuart did not exist.
“But,” I protested, “here he is. He’s alive.”
“No, no, Madame! The law says you must have a birth certificate.”
I had to send him to a private school, which was something of a drain on the budget.
Bill found a studio on Montparnasse, just back of the Station. Again and again he came home aglow with news of meeting the great Matisse and other revolutionary painters barely emerging from obscurity. I trailed around to studios and exhibits occasionally, but I was trying to become articulate on my own subject, and paid scant attention to those who loomed up later as giants in the artistic world. The companionship of Jessie Ashley and Bill Haywood, who had just come to Paris, was more familiar to me.
I was also eager to encounter French people and discover their points of view. One of the first was Victor Dave, the last surviving leader of the French Commune of 1871. Thanksgiving Day we had a little dinner party and invited American friends to greet him. He was then over eighty, but still keen and active. As the evening wore on we started him talking about his past experiences and he held us enthralled until way into the morning, when we all had breakfast in the apartment.
The old Communard spoke English far better than any of us spoke French. He was now making three dollars a week by his linguistic abilities, because he was the sole person the Government could call upon not only for the language but the dialects of the Balkans. Just the day before he had been translating a new series of treaties which France was making with the Balkan States in a desperate attempt to tie them to the Triple Entente. Though he was a philosophical person who could be gay over his own hardships, his confidences to us were serious and sad. From the agreements then being drawn up, particularly those with Rumania, he could see nothing but war ahead, predicting definitely that within five years all nations would be at each other’s throats. We newcomers to Europe could not grasp the meaning of his words, and the residents shrugged their shoulders and said, “He is getting old. He cannot see that we are now beyond war, that people are too intelligent ever to resort to it again.”
As I look back it is apparent that we heard in France the whole rumblings of the World War. Unrest was in the air as it had been in the United States, but with a difference. Theaters were showing anti-German plays, revanche placards decorated Napoleon’s tomb in the Invalides, and the rusty black draperies around the shrouded statue of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde pointed a macabre note. These were remembered afterwards; at the time they were merely part of the Paris scene.
I realized the disadvantage of not being better acquainted with the French language, and started in to practice what I knew and learn more. Good fortune brought me in touch with an Englishwoman, the wife of the editor of L’Humanité, the organ of the Confédération Générale de Travail, the famous C.G.T. To her I clung and at her home I met the Socialist leader, Jean Jaurès. His English was bad and my French worse; we had to have an interpreter. Doubtless we missed a lot, but even so we found we understood each other. I believe that his assassination on the eve of the war which he had done so much to prevent proved an irreparable loss to the cause of peace.
In my language difficulties Jessie Ashley’s fluency was an ever-present help. Together we used to eat in the restaurants frequented by laborers, who came in groups, keeping their caps on, enjoying the cheap and good food accompanied by wine. Often we were the only women in the place, always excepting the inevitable cashier.
Though women were rarely seen at a C.G.T. meeting, Victor Dave took Jessie and me to a particularly impressive one which Bill Haywood was to address. His reputation as a firebrand had preceded him, and the police were making certain that no riot should ensue; they were stopping each person who crossed the bridge and demanding an account of his destination. Our passport was the venerable appearance of our escort, whose long white hair hung low about his head. His top hat, that universal badge of respectability, let us through.
The vast auditorium was filled with some three thousand French syndicalists, similar to the American I.W.W.’s, all standing, all wearing the uniform of the proletariat—black-visored caps and loose corduroys. They were being urged not to take up arms against the workers of other nations. I began to wonder whether perhaps the various tokens of disquiet which had impalpably surrounded me since coming to France had some more desperate meaning than we in America had realized. The War, What For? discussions in New York had seemed only a part of the evening conversations. Here again I was listening to protests against government efforts to arouse national hatred by calling it patriotism. I had heard the words so often, “Workers of the World, Unite,” yet at last I was vaguely uneasy because of the difference in spirit.
As we emerged into the narrow, alley-like street we