At the church Congress in Birmingham, October 12, 1921, Lord Dawson, the king’s physician, in criticizing the report of the Lambeth Conference concerning Birth Control, delivered an address defending this practice.  Of such bravery and eloquence that it could not be ignored, this address electrified the entire British public.  It aroused a storm of abuse, and yet succeeded, as no propaganda could, in mobilizing the forces of progress and intelligence in the support of the cause.

Just one month later, the First American Birth Control Conference culminated in a significant and dramatic incident.  At the close of the conference a mass meeting was scheduled in the Town Hall, New York City, to discuss the morality of Birth Control.  Mr. Harold Cox, editor of the Edinburgh Review, who had come to New York to attend the conference, was to lead the discussion.  It seemed only natural for us to call together scientists, educators, members of the medical profession, and theologians of all denominations, to ask their opinion upon this uncertain and important phase of the controversy.  Letters were sent to eminent men and women in different parts of the world.  In this letter we asked the following questions:—­

1.  Is over-population a menace to the peace of the world?

2.  Would the legal dissemination of scientific Birth Control information, through the medium of clinics by the medical profession, be the most logical method of checking the problem of over-population?

3.  Would knowledge of Birth Control change the moral attitude of men and women toward the marriage bond, or lower the moral standards of the youth of the country?

4.  Do you believe that knowledge which enables parents to limit their families will make for human happiness, and raise the moral, social and intellectual standards of population?

We sent this questionnaire not only to those who we thought might agree with us, but we sent it also to our known opponents.

When I arrived at the Town Hall the entrance was guarded by policemen.  They told me there would be no meeting.  Before my arrival r executives had been greeted by Monsignor Dineen, secretary of Archbishop Hayes, of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, who informed them that the meeting would be prohibited on the ground that it was contrary to public morals.  The police had closed the doors.  When they opened them to permit the exit of the large audience which had gathered, Mr. Cox and I entered.  I attempted to exercise my constitutional right of free speech, but was prohibited and arrested.  Miss Mary Winsor, who protested against this unwarranted arrest, was likewise dragged off to the police station.  The case was dismissed the following morning.  The ecclesiastic instigators of the affair were conspicuous by their absence from the police court.  But the incident was enough to expose the opponents of Birth Control and the extreme methods they used to combat our progress.  The case was too flagrant, too gross an affront, to pass unnoticed by the newspapers.  The progress of our movement was indicated in the changed attitude of the American Press, which had perceived the danger to the public of the unlawful tactics used by the enemies of Birth Control in preventing open discussion of a vital question.