When the vigilant secretary found we were not direct constituents, we were told the Senator was busy—in conference, in committee, meeting an arriving delegation. Would we come back later, tomorrow, next week? Always we came back promptly and on the dot. For months it was almost impossible to see any of them. Often as many as forty calls were made, and if we succeeded in getting two interviews, we considered that a good day’s work. When finally we did reach them, few of the younger, still fewer of the older, Senators knew what we were talking about. When we were able to make this clear, young and old alike, just as in the state legislatures, were full of fears—fear of prejudices, fear of cloakroom joshings, mainly fear of Catholic opposition.
Though Senator Norris had approved the repeal bill, he believed that ours had a better chance of passing because antagonism to the former was even greater than in 1926. He himself had Muscle Shoals and the Lame Duck Amendment on his hands and several more pet projects to boot, and suggested we get somebody to introduce the bill who would not be up for re-election. Our choice fell on Senator Frederick Huntington Gillett of Massachusetts, for years Speaker of the House, and now about to retire. He was a gentleman born, gray-haired, typically New England, without children or any particular philosophy regarding birth control. Our Southern helpers, notably Mrs. J. B. Vandeveer, were persistent and determined. They would not be put off with polite, routine dismissals, but asked point-blank, “Will you introduce this bill for us?” Senator Gillett, recognizing their earnestness, agreed. But we heard no more of it.
When I returned at the next session of the same Congress someone remarked, “Aren’t you lucky to have had your bill introduced?”
“What?” I stared with wide-open eyes.
“Yes, Senator Gillett remembered it a few days before the session closed.”
I called on him at once. “Where’s our bill gone?”
It had gone nowhere. “We’ll just send it around to the Judiciary Committee,” said the Senator. “Norris is Chairman and he’s friendly. He’ll pick out a good sub-committee for you.”
We gathered our witnesses together the night before the hearing, which was to be February 13th, and asked, “What do you want to say? How long do you want in which to say it?” We had eight people to testify in the space of two hours; moments had to be carefully parceled out to each. We were permitted to deduct ten from our allotment the first day to be used the following one for a rebuttal.
William E. Borah of Idaho and Sam G. Bratton of New Mexico had been assigned to us with Senator Gillett, but Borah did not appear. The audience, mostly women, crowded the committee room, imposing with marble pillars, glossy mahogany, gleaming windows.
Dr. John Whitridge Williams, obstetrician in chief of Johns Hopkins, summed up the medical evidence for birth control. “A doctor who has this information (prevention of conception) and does not give it cannot help feeling he is taking a responsibility for the lives and welfare of large numbers of people.” The Reverend Charles Francis Potter, founder of the Humanist Society of New York, discussed the moral phase. “The bird of war is not the eagle but the stork.” Professor Roswell H. Johnson, then at the University of Pittsburgh, stressed eugenics. “Most intelligent, well-informed people ... are so determined in this (spacing children) that no laws yet devised succeed in forcing a natural family, which is about eighteen children, upon them.” Rabbi Sidney Goldstein dealt with religious aspects. “The population is not made up of those who are born but is made up of those who survive.” Professor of Sociology Henry Pratt Fairchild spoke from the economic point of view. “We human individuals cannot break laws of nature. We can, however, choose which of her laws we see fit to obey.” Mrs. Douglas Moffatt announced that the twenty-seven hundred members of the New York City Junior League were overwhelmingly in favor of the bill.