Birth Control

James Noah Henry Slee, president of Three-in-One Oil Co., gives a biblical tithe of his income to the American Birth Control League, great controvert of the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. His interest in the League is threefold. He is by hobby a sociologist, by avocation treasurer of the League, by choice husband (since 1922) of Margaret Sanger, the League's founder (in 1921). Between 1921 and 1926 his givings totaled $56,141, which he carefully deducted from his taxable income, because the American Birth Control League exists for "charitable, scientific and educational purposes."

Last week the U. S. Board of Tax Appeals noted that the League aims "to enlist the support and co-operation of legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the lawful repeal and amendment of State and Federal statutes which deal with the prevention of conception." Such activity is not reprehensible, in the tax board's opinion, but neither is it charitable, scientific or educational. Hence Mr. Slee must pay taxes on at least part of his League donations.

The significance of the incident was that one important Governmental agency accepted in passim the League's contraceptive activities as normal and acceptable in present U. S. culture.

Even the conservative Saturday Evening Post has acquired this new attitude. Its March 2 issue (3,050,000 copies, to be read by perhaps 15,000,000 U. S. men, women and children) contained a veiled rebuke for female failure to use contraceptives. The rebuke consisted of a cartoon by Donald McKee, captioned "Why the March Hare Was Mad." It depicted a buck hare hopping furiously beside a huge bed on whose three pillows lay an abashed, puzzled doe hare with nine newborn.* Harold the buck hare: "Again? What's the idea? Did you never hear of Birth Control?"

Margaret Sanger, chief U. S. prophetess of Birth Control, is now devoting herself to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in Manhattan.

There appeared lately a book unique in U. S. medical history. It is Technique of Contraception: the Principles & Practice of Anti-Conceptional Methods, by Dr. James F. Cooper, medical director of the Clinical Research Department of the American Birth Control League. No such book has ever before been printed in the U. S., nor made available, because the Government has forbidden the importation from England of the only other book of its kind in English, Marie Carmichael Slopes's Contraception: its Theory, History and Practice. In German Dr. Alfred Grotjahn, professor of social hygiene at the University of Berlin, has published two monumental books on the subject, but it is almost impossible to find copies of them in the U. S.

Dr. Cooper's Technique of Contraception deals with the significance of birth control, the basic phases of contraception, temporary and permanent methods of contraception, a contraceptive method new to the U. S., contraceptive fallacies, physical and mental effects of contraception, investigations. Day-Nichols, Inc., of Manhattan, publish the book for $7.50. They may sell it only to doctors. They may not send it through the mails, must ship it by express.

Money is a sine qua non of the research which birth-control leaders have under way. Last fortnight Mrs. Sanger gathered 500 well-to-do and persuaded New Yorkers in a ballroom of the Hotel Plaza. To stimulate donations to support her bureau she placed on the dais a dozen poor and, formerly, prolific mothers--wives of bricklayers, carpenters, waiters, clerks. These testified to the beneficence of what Mrs. Sanger and her acolytes had taught them. The audience forthwith gave Mrs. Sanger $8,000.

Mrs. Sanger's audience and patrons were of greater public interest than her witnesses. To wit, thrice-married Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Mrs. William A. Rockefeller, Prof. John Dewey, Poet Witter Bynner, Mrs. Learned Hand (wife of a New York judge), Corliss Lament (son of a Morgan partner), Mrs. Ogden Reid, Norman Thomas (last Socialist candidate for President of the U. S.).

Among the speakers at Mrs. Sanger's party was Prof. Frank Hamilton Hankins, Smith College sociologist. He bitterly declared that most of Birth Control's opponents are celibates. The opposite is true of the two women leaders of the movement-- Mrs. Margaret Higgins Sanger (Slee), in the U. S., and Mrs. Marie Carmichael Stopes (Gates Roe) in England. They are about the same age, 45. Both have been married twice. Mrs. Sanger's first husband was one William Sanger. The present is James Noah Henry Slee (see above).

Dr. Stopes, as she prefers to be known, annulled her marriage to Reginald Ruggles Gates, professor of botany at the University of London. He is internationally known through his teaching at the University of Chicago, McGill University, University of California, Missouri Botanical Gardens. Dr. Stopes is, professionally, also a botanist. Her present husband is Humphrey Verdon Roe, pioneer English aviator and brother of A. V. Roe, whom the Royal Aero Club has just declared was not the first Briton to fly a heavier-than-air machine. H. V. Roe, rich, devotes himself to birth control campaigning. Dr. Stopes has borne one son, to Mr. Roe.* Mrs. Sanger has borne two sons, and a daughter who died, all by her first husband.

*Slipshod biology. Hares litter two to five leverets, several times a year. Rabbits breed four to eight times a year, with three to eight young in a litter. Leverets are born with fur and open eyes. Rabbit young are naked and blind.

*Dr. Stopes' mother, famed Shakespearean Scholar Mrs. Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, died the first week of February.