This belief seemed at times to force locked doors. It enabled me to dictate hundreds of letters, to interview dozens of people, to debate, or to lecture, all in twenty-four hours. Day after day I attended parlor meetings, night after night open forums, returning home too tired to eat, too excited to sleep. Frequently at seven in the morning the telephone started ringing; somebody wanted to catch me before I left the house.
For the purpose of having a more solid and substantial basis on which to operate the Review, the New York Women’s Publishing Company was incorporated in May, 1918; shares were sold at ten dollars each. The women who gave both monetary and moral support were the wives of business men who advised them how to conduct this organization in the proper fashion. Each month Mary Knoblauch opened her charming apartment for the regular meetings any corporation was required to hold.
The movement can never be disassociated in my mind from Frances Ackermann, who, at the suggestion of Mabel Spinney of Greenwich House, came to us as Treasurer. She was exceptionally able and was soon one of our bulwarks, remaining with us eleven years. Her family was wrapped up in orthodoxy—church and Wall Street and the status quo in politics—but Frances’ interests were much broader, and she was not content to lead the usual type of life ordained by her social and financial standing.
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.”