Girls Night Out (1933 Style)

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Congress, Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry D. Hatfield, Senate, Woman's Press Club

On March 20, 1933, Margaret Sanger was one of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s guests of honor at the annual dinner and “stunt party” of the Woman’s National Press Club.  Eleanor Roosevelt, who had become First Lady only a few weeks earlier on March 4, had already broken with tradition by being the first First Lady to hold her own press conferences. Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, she “set a new precedent by accepting an invitation to see herself satirized by the press.”

Among the guests of honor were Ettie R. Garner, the wife of Vice President John Nance Garner, the wives of all Cabinet members (except Anna Wilmarth Thompson Ickes, the wife of Harold Ickes), Senator Hattie Caraway (Ark.), the first woman elected to the Senate, and Representatives Florence B. Kahn (Calif.), Edith Nourse Rogers (Mass.), Virginia Jenckes (Ind.), and Kathryn O’Loughlin McCarthy (Kan.).  Other influential women attending were Grace Abbott, the head of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Elinor Fatman Morgenthau, the wife of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and, of course, Margaret Sanger.

Among the many skits described, one stands out, it being Women’s History Month, as it was described in the New York Times:

The Senate of the future–all women–was then presented by a few of the newspaper women regularly covering the Capitol, showing a brisk, business-like Senate solving a depression a hundred years hence. They solved unemployment by giving barbecues and Sunday School picnics, buying up the surplus food and feeding it to the hungry people, while the farmers bought things that had to be made in factories and everyone went back to work.

They raised money by raffling off the Commerce Building, ‘at 10 cents a share so nobody would have to pay too much for it.’ They stopped the Far-East war by giving a 1,400 piece jigsaw puzzle to the soldiers. They solved the liquor problem by putting alcoholic beverages in the ‘spinach category,’ forcing children to take whiskey, gin and champagne until they hate it.

Sanger and Senator Henry D. Hatfield, the sponsor of S.4436.

For Sanger, who was in the midst of lobbying Congress to remove birth control from the list of obscene materials that could not be mailed in the United States, the night was likely an entertaining diversion.  The idea of an all-woman Senate must have been tantalizing, as her most recent legislative bill, Senate 4436, had just been killed in the Judiciary Committee at the end of January.  She was undaunted and promised not to give up the fight, telling a New York Herald Tribune reporter:

Of course, I’m glad the bill has had the dignity of a report. . . . It’s the first time in sixty years that it has come before the full Judiciary Committee.  This is a step forward, but I think that under the circumstances, with the economic uncertainty of millions of families, we might have had less quibbling over things that are in the future and that no one knows about.  The present needs have been disregarded. If you only knew the work and struggle we have put in to get as far as we have. . . . I suppose we’ll have to grow old and totter to the grave to get that bill passed.

Sanger never did get her birth control bill passed, either in the House or the Senate. She won the right to mail contraceptives and contraceptive information through a court challenge, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1937.

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For more on these events see: “Last-Ditch Fight In Birth Control Contest Nears,” New York Herald Tribune, Jan. 30, 1933, “Press Women Give Annual Frolic,” New York Times, Mar. 21, 1933, “First Lady Satirized by Press,” Los Angeles Times, Mar. 21, 1933, and “Mrs. Roosevelt Will Attend as Honor Guest, Stunt Party Given by Woman’s Press Club,” Washington Post, Mar. 19, 1933.

Still Looking for a New Deal for Women?

Eleanor Roosevelt

On September 28, 1933, Margaret Sanger was invited to a dinner and reception for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt sponsored by the twelfth annual Exposition of Women’s Arts and Industries.  The meeting highlighted women’s activities in business, clubs and the professions. Sanger was also asked by the National Recovery Administration to give a five-minute speech at the dinner, one of a number of prominent speakers invited.

The Exposition was held at New York City;’s Hotel Astor, and featured booths that celebrated both traditional women’s work and new avenues for employment, such as aviation and politics.  The Girls Scouts held the finals of its best Girl Scout cake baking contest, and there was a political forum each evening with speakers from the Women’s Committees of the Fusion and Democratic parties.

With an important presidential election coming up shortly, we thought that both Roosevelt and Sanger’s comments were instructive: First, from Eleanor Roosevelt:

It is always a thrill to see what women are doing, and what they can do, in business. It adds to my already firm conviction that women are becoming more and more of an influence in every walk of life. It is true that women are becoming more influential and more respected for their thought that is spreading throughout the world, and action has always followed real thinking, and a great deal depends on what and how they think in the next few weeks.  Whether the new conditions are satisfactory and helpful depends greatly upon what the women of our country decide. Therefore, with their added influence they have added responsibility. (Boston Globe, Sept. 29, 1933, p. 27)

Margaret Sanger

When it came to Margaret Sanger’s speech, she exhorted women to demand better, to demand the same consideration that men were getting:

It was President Roosevelt who had the courage, foresight and vision to raise his voice on behalf of the forgotten man, and is it not time for the enlightened women of this country to raise a voice in unison on behalf of the most forgotten of all living creatures, the overburdened child-bearing woman? Why not a new deal for the 43 million women of child-bearing age in this country whose future life, liberty and pursuit of happiness depend absolutely upon the knowledge of how to control the physiological function of motherhood?

We ask a “new deal” for the mother immortalized in poetry but neglected in fact–

A New Deal for the mother whose life is shadowed by constant fears of unwanted pregnancies–a New Deal for the mother who goes down into the valley of the shadow of death for every baby born–

A new consideration for the women who appeal for contraceptive knowledge to hospitals, clinics, and social agencies, and are denied this by priest and politician alike.

The solidarity of woman is as noble as the brotherhood of man and the opportunity is here today for all of us whose lives have been benefited by such knowledge to pass that right and privilege on to the underprivileged woman who is too poor, too weak, too inarticulate to battle for her own rights.

In 1933, Sanger was enmeshed in a multi-year lobbying campaign to remove birth control from the list of obscene materials that could not be mailed in the United States. This battle would not be won in Congress, but three years later in the courts, with the U.S. v. One Package decision.  Sanger’s papers document the struggles women endured to secure reproductive freedom, and should serve as a warning about what might occur should we be unwilling to work to keep them.

For the complete text of Sanger’s speech, see The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928-1929.

For more on Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt, see our newsletter article, “Margaret Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt – The Burden of Public Life.”