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On her arrival in St. Louis, Sanger gave several interviews to reporters.
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MRS. MARGARET SANGER TELLS OF HER PROPAGANDA FOR BIRTH CONTROL
Meeting the Federal Authorities at close quarters and having an indictment hanging over hear head like the sword of Damocles, has not lessened the enthusiasm of Mrs. Margaret Sanger, the "woman rebel" of New York, or diminished her intention to teach the women of United States">America how they may control the size of their families.
Mrs. Sanger is in St. Louis this week to lecture and will give her talk on birth control at the Victoria Theater next Monday evening.
"Mrs. Sanger is married to William Sanger, an artist, and is the mother of three children.
Mrs. Sanger is making a coast-to-coast lecture tour and is attempting to get a committee of women, physicians and trained nurses together to establish a clinic at which birth control propaganda amy be spread.
Mrs. Sanger says she has no message for the rich woman, or even the middle class woman--as she believes both already are in possession to a great extent of the information she is giving women of the working classes and of foreign birth.
Will Defy U.S, Marshalls
"Every woman wants this information," she said today. "And as long as I believe this to be the case, I shall continue to defy the federal authorities."
"When I was indicted it was on the charge that my pamphlet 'Family Limitation' was 'obscene.' When the indictment was dropped, the federal authorities intimated that it was because I virtually had agreed not to use the mails further."
"But I did not agree, and they knew I would not refrain from the use of the mails. I told them at the time that no true woman could retain her self-respect if she permitted herself to be frightened off, and that I intended to spread my propaganda. And I have continued to do so."
Mrs. Sanger attributes most of the insanity, all of the mental, moral and physical defectives and feeble-minded children and adults to the practice of having large families where living conditions are not right.
"No workingman is able to support more than two children." Mrs. Sanger said. "The workingman makes an average salary of $10 a week. On this he cannot afford to let his wife bring into the world more than two children. He cannot take care of them."
She Believes in Marriage
Mrs. Sanger was asked if she did not believe it better for those who were unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenthood to remain unmarried.
"Decidedly no," she replied. "I think it is much more moral for a fine young man to take a girl as wife, and raise two or three children to be decent, moral, upright citizens. But if they can have other children only by jeopardizing the futures of all, by throwing some into charitable institutions and others into jail, is not my plan of helping them to hold down the size of the family much better?"
"But suppose you are putting means into people's hands of bringing race suicide?" it was suggested.
"I hardly think we need consider that," she said. All women who are fit to be mothers want to be mothers. The majority are willing to be the mother of two or three children, or even more, according to their circumstances."
Children Must be Born Right
"As for the women who do not want to be mothers and would use this knowledge to prevent such a happening--is such a woman fit to bring a child into this world? Wouldn't she bear an unloved boy or girl? Children must be born right; and one of the first principles of being born right is to be born of love and longing."
Mrs. Sanger was asked if her doctrine might not be considered anti-Christian."
"Only persons fogyish in their views ever advance that argument." she said. "It has nothing to do with Christianity."
Mrs. Sanger said the idea of spreading this knowledge on birth control first came to herduring her work as a trained nurse. She pursued this occupation fourteen years.
She said in her hospital work she saw so many women broken in health and spirit because of their efforts to keep from having children, that she determined to help them. Statistics on the deaths of women from criminal operations are appalling, she said. They occur chiefly among the lower classes, where women are the victims of quacks and malpractitioners.
Began Work Two Years Ago.
Mrs. Sanger began the publication of The Woman Rebel early in 1914. The first issue of the magazine was suppressed. Seven issues out of nine were confiscated in the mails. In August, 1914, a federal Grand Jury in New York indicted her, basing the charges of obscenity on articles in the March, May and July issues of The Woman Rebel.
"I decided to avoid imprisonment," she said "at least until I had given out my information. One hundred thousand copies of a pamphlet 'Family Limitation,' were prepared and distributed and I sailed for England."
"There I discussed my work with many prominent persons and it was indorsed by such thinkers as H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, the novelists; Havelock Ellis, noted sociologist; Edward Carpenter and Gilbert Murray--the latter a professor at Oxford."
"My sole desire has been to throw the matter open for discussion. I am not so anxious actually to put means of birth control in women's hands, as to have the world of men and women stop and think and determine for themselves if it will not be better for all to have this information."
Physicians Endorse Her Work
Mrs. Sanger says the majority of physicians with whom she has come in contact endorse her work, but themselves are prevented by law from taking up the propaganda, except in a secret manner.
Her chief difficulty is in getting people to come "out in the open" with endorsements--because the movement is such a radical one.
In West Virginia, in the mining district, her pamphlets had been sent to thousands of miners, through a central distributing committee. The men on this committee determined that women who had borne nine children were the only ones to have the information. The women petitioned them, however, to give it to mothers of five children, and this distribution is now being made.
Mrs. Sanger also sent the pamphlets to colonies of working people in Butte, Mont., in the textile plants at Lowell and Fall River,Mass., Paterson, N.J., and the Chicago Stock Yards.
On her present lecture tour she has been in many cities. In Akron, Ohio, when the hours for the lecture came, the man who owned the hall notified the committeee that the lecture could not be held there. He brought the police in to keep Mrs. Sanger and her audience out of the building. He said he was willing to be sued, but that the lecture should not be given. She also had difficulties with the police in Milwaukee, she said.
Unlike Emma Goldman, the anarchist, who was thrown into jail for giving facts and ways of birth control in her lecture, Mrs. Sanger gives none of this information from the platform. She gives it in person, or though her pamphlets.