which we are seeing flagrantly violated. No group sins more openly in this than the birth-control enthusiasts. This George Washington High School is a perfect example. In the heart of the city of New York, this propaganda is deliberately attempted, and with deliberate intent to reach high-school people. To pass the amendments under consideration to-day would be to encourage and strengthen a form of business racket that at the present moment needs investigation.

Mr. Chairman, may I, representing the 100,000 women of our organization, ask your committee formally to inquire into the profit that accrues from the sale of contraceptives, and the millions of them that are sold in this country each year before considering further amendments that would triple and quadruple the sale of these items. Might I ask you, as a citizen representing so large a number of voters, the courtesy of an answer to this question from your committee before you make a decision? The statistics are easily obtainable. I have heard birth-control advocates boast of them more than once. You will find that they run into the hundred millions.

Here is a fine avenue for profiteering. Any honest druggist will tell you that the percentage of profit is often 200 to 300 per cent on these articles which are sold with as much subterfuge as any bootleg liquor. Why fool ourselves in this whole thing? This country needs a little old-fashioned honesty. It needs a few laws that are laws. We do not need to amend weak-kneed legislation to a greater weakness.

May I have these pamphlets incorporated into the proceedings of the hearings for the benefit of the record? If not, may I ask the committee to pass this pamphlet around so that they may see what it is?

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Doctor, under existing law, from what you state the pamphlet contains, it would be excluded from the mails or from shipment in interstate commerce. I have not read the pamphlet, but if it goes into this record, this record will be a frankable document and in my judgment nothing should be incorporated in it that violates existing law. I think it would be much better to just have it passed around.

What is the desire of the committee about it?

Mr. WATSON. I agree with the chairman.

Doctor MCGOLDRICK. I hope that you will honor the person who brings this violation to your attention by giving our plea a little thoughtful consideration. It is a serious matter to those of us who are mothers. This kind of thing seems to cheapen our whole system of Government.

I have only one kind of birth control that I am interested in this morning, and that is the control of the birth of this bill.

I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, for your courtesy.

Mr. CANFIELD. Are you a medical doctor, Doctor McGoldrick? Doctor MCGOLDRICK. A doctor of laws; bachelor of arts and doctor of laws.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. We thank you for your presence and contribution.

Mr. BURTON. The next witness is Mrs. Alice Bicksler.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ALICE BICKSLER, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL CIRCLE, DAUGHTERS OF ISABELLA, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mrs. BICKSLER. Mr. Chairman, may I read this letter addressed to the chairman of the committee?

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mrs. BICKSLER (reading):

Hon. CHARLES R. CRISP,

NATIONAL CIRCLE, DAUGHTERS OF ISABELLA,
Washington, D. C., May 19, 1932.

Chairman Committee on Ways and Means,

United States House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR MR. CONGRESSMAN: The Daughters of Isabella, a national organization, of which I have the honor of being a national director, comprises 500 circles, located throughout the States and Canada, with a membership of 70,000 women.

Our national body, in convention assembled, have passed resolutions protesting amendments to the Penal Code which would permit sending of information concerning birth-control practice through the mail.

We feel that House bill No. 11082 threatens more seriously the moral conditions in our country than any measure proposed heretofore.

As the principal work of the Daughters of Isabella is the welfare of young women, we feel that it is incumbent upon us to do everything in our power to prevent the passage of such legislation.

We beg, therefore, Mr. Chairman, that your committee do not report this bill favorably.

Respectfully submitted.

ALICE C. BICKSLER, National Director, Daughters of Isabella.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. We thank you for your contribution, Mrs. Bicksler.

Mr. BURTON. I desire to introduce Canon William Sheafe Chase, representing the International Reform Federation, Brooklyn, N. Y. STATEMENT OF REV. WILLIAM SHEAFE CHASE, SUPERINTENDENT INTERNATIONAL REFORM FEDERATION, RECTOR HONORARIOUS, CHRIST CHURCH, BROOKLYN, N. Y.

Doctor CHASE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, before testifying for myself, may I explain that Dr. Howard A. Kelly, of Baltimore, professor emeritus of John Hopkins University department of gynecology, spoke yesterday morning following Doctor Morgan, whose address you listened to yesterday. Had he known, he might possibly have been here, and he may be here this morning. I telegraphed him and had telephone conversation about him, and I hope he will he here. He is the great authority upon this particular subject. Every physician in this country will tell you that he is really the leading authority in America. For 61 years he has been a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and I am glad to have him supporting me, as I have been for 26 years rector of Christ Church, Bedford Avenue, in Brooklyn, and offered my resignation on my seventy-fourth birthday. I have come here to carry on my ministry in what seems to be even a larger way than before.

In behalf of the International Reform Federation, of Washington and its clients all over the Nation, I desire to enter an emphatic protest against your committee giving its approval to Representative

Hancock's bill, H. R. 11082, to permit the importation, distribution of contraceptive instruments and literature throughout the United States. This bill, favored by the American Birth Prevention League, we realize, has not the slightest prospect of enactment. We represent the vast body of middle class citizens who have no commercial interest in opposing this bill and who realize the havoc in manners and morals which the enacting of this bill will produce.

The three paramount objections to the bill are:

1. It will increase illicit sexual intercourse among the unmarried. It will do so, not merely by removing the fear of childbirth but because the enactment of this bill would be the obvious indorsement by the United States Government of the birth-control theories.

This bill will increase promiscuity among the married as well as the unmarried. It will be the greatest blow ever delivered in this country to our homes and to monogamy, which is the climax of the evolution of centuries upon centuries of sex experience. It will increase adulteries and abortions. It will demoralize home life.

2. The enactment of the Hancock bill will largely increase the bawdy-house business. It will help the various vice businesses by expert forms of advertisement and by high-powered salesmanship to convince young people generally that there is nothing wrong in illicit sexual intercourse among the unmarried.

The passage of this bill is, of course, favored by the producers of sex-appeal motion pictures and immoral plays and the publishing of indecent literature. It is favored by every form of organized crime. It has been called the doctor's bill. The American Medical Association has disowned it. Without meaning to reflect upon certain eminent and sincere believers in the so-called birth control, this bill, which should be opposed by all conservative and sincere believers in birth control, should not be called the doctor's bill but the crook's bill. These shrewd, clever people who make enormous fortunes by exploiting the weaknesses of the young and immature are the worst blots upon our civilization.

They are too clever to appear or to do anything to allow their commercial motives to be suspected. They deceive others into acting in such a manner as to induce others to work for them.

The tempter is worse than the tempted one who yields to the temptation. In the parable with which the Bible opens, Adam and Eve were not the principal sufferers because they ate of the forbidden fruit. It was the serpent only that was cursed. This bill puts large financial gain in the hands of the serpents of our civilization. They are not here advocating this bill. They are too clever. They are not purchasing those who advocate this bill. They are merely misleading

them.

The bill is loosely drawn in such a way as to assist those who are in the business of pendering to vice. No sensible person can oppose giving to trustworthy physicians freedom to do what is necessary to protect the lives of women which would be endangered by another pregnancy if their husbands can not control themselves.

All physicians, however, are not trustworthy, and any law giving greater freedom to physicians upon this subject, therefore, should be drawn so as to protect the young and unmarried from the unrestrained sale of contraceptives by corrupt physicians. The Hancock

bill fails at this point. The present laws which this bill would repeal were enacted from 1873 to 1876 so as to support the laws of the States upon the subject. In spite of the excessive activity of the birth prevention propaganda, the legislature of no State has weakened its laws upon the subject. Why should not the Federal law continue to support what is evidently the right of each State to legislate upon the subject, without hindrance by the Federal Government?

I have appeared in Albany against the efforts of this same group of people in their endeavor to change the law in the State of New York. If the State of New York opposes what is proposed here, why should the Federal Government make it more difficult for the State of New York to enforce the law.

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1930 has been incorrectly cited as if it would favor this bill. The Lambeth conference of 1930 consisted of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York, and 306 other bishops, not Roman Catholics,. members of the Church of England or in communion with it, from Australia, Canada, the United States, Japan, China, Korea, and other parts of the world. Resolution 18 of that conference was as follows:

Sexual intercourse between persons who are not legally married is a grievous sin. In view of the widespread and increasing use of contraceptives among the unmarried and the extension of irregular unions owing to the diminution of any fear of consequences, the conference presses for legislation forbidding the. exposure for sale and the unrestricted advertisement of contraceptives, and placing definite restrictions upon their purchase.

The Hancock bill, instead of placing any definite restrictions upon the purchase of contraceptives, has every appearance of having been drawn to deceive the public and to give to the druggists of the country the business of the open sale of contraceptives.

If you will notice, gentlemen, the change that was made in the first printing of this bill and the second, you will see more plainly what was evidently the purpose of the bill.

The Lambeth conference, by its resolutions adopted, is explicitly opposed to the principles which are incorporated in the Hancock bill. On page 90, the report, speaking of contraceptives, says

May I pause at this time to say that I am providing the committee with a copy of all the resolutions of the Lambeth conference and call your attention to this one which in the original is on page 90—

They have been frequently used to avoid the responsibilities of parenthood and as a means of escaping from the self-control which should be exercised in married as well as single life. They have become a danger to many civilized nations by a disproportionate reduction of their best stock. We think that some of those who are most active in the advocacy of birth control do not give sufficient weight to those considerations.

In resolution 15 it says:

The conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. Resolution 17:

While the conference admits that economic conditions are a serious factor in the situation, it condemns the propaganda which treats conception control as a way of meeting those unsatisfactory social and economic conditions which ought to be changed by the influence of Christian public opinion.

The birth-prevention movement also seeks to remedy such social evils as poverty and war, as well as of sex sin, by ignoring that people have souls. It is covetousness, pride, ambition, jealousy, and injustice which are the seed of those evils. They can not be cured by the reduction of population, especially by killing off the best people. The birth-control philosophy seeks to cure the results of sin without religion and without God. The birth-control movement is largely the product of a materialistic, secular, and godless philosophy. It treats of men and women as if they were merely animals, governed wholly by their passions, and it discards the age-long conviction that human beings are souls, created with bodies in order to exercise and strengthen their souls by using their lower nature so that their higher nature, by self-discipline, self-control, self-denial, and heroism, can act in cooperation with God.

3. The Hancock bill will reduce parenthood among those best able to bear children and to educate them properly. The predominance of children born will, therefore, be among the lowest and most ignorant people.

The Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1930 in its report said:

There is no doubt, however, that the diminution of the birth rate in modern times by 50 per cent is mainly due to the knowledge and use of methods which prevent conception. These methods are now widely used in every class of society. There are many who advocate them as the solution of social and personal problems, there are others who condemn them as sinful, there are many who are sorely perplexed as to the legitimacy of their use.

We believe the enactment of this bill would give the sanction of the United States Government upon this evasion of parenthood by the luxurious and selfish classes of society, which would be, not merely race suicide but the destruction of our free Government, by increasing the irresponsible and criminal classes of our citizens.

The false assumption of birth control is that men can not be gentlemen and can not control themselves and, therefore, must be brutalized by yielding to their animal passions rather than by educating and guiding them to be developed into heroism and into their full spiritual stature.

The most sincere part of the birth-control movement is its desire to relieve women of suffering, due to childbirth by the use of mechanical contrivances, and without the use of self-restraint. Birth control not only degrades women but it leads to nervous and physical ills, worse than those suffered through motherhood. This is clearly set forth by Prof. F. W. Foerster, of the University of Vienna, in chapter 7 of Marriage and the Sex Problem, perhaps the greatest book upon the subject. The demoralizing lust which is aroused in both sexes brings its inevitable penalty by the brutalizing of men. Doctor Foerster says:

Even the most excessive production of children could not endanger women, so greatly or so deeply undermine the true necessities of their existences as will the artificial restrictions of the family. The male sex passion, when relieved from all sense of responsibility and from the necessity for periods of selfcontrol, when artificially liberated from the natural consequences which lend its meaning and dignity and link it to the purpose of life as a whole, will necessarily become more pleasure seeking and more recklessly selfish than it could be under normal conditions.