Letter to Margaret Sanger on Birth Control

My dear Girl:

The enclosed money order for $40.00 represents the forty dollars collected at my Birth Control Lecture for you. I am sure it will come very handy, as you must be terribly hard pressed at the present time. It is my intention to use all other lecturers on the same subject as a means of raising some money for you. I know that it is not enough to express my affection for you and my devotion to the thing we both love so much, but in our materialistic age, the money question is very pressing indeed.

I really think it is impardonable on your part to blame yourself for the death of Peggy [Sanger’s daughter, who contracted polio in 1910, before her first birthday]. I am sure that it is due only to your depressed state of mind as I cannot imagine anyone with your intelligence to hold herself responsible for something that could not possibly have been in your power.

No doubt the child would have been given better care in your home, but whether that would have saved her life is a mere speculation, which ought not to take possession of you in the way it evidently has. Please, dear, don’t think me heartless. I feel deeply with your loss but I also feel that you owe it to yourself and the work you have before you to collect your strength. After all dear, it is a thing which has passed and cannot be redeemed whereas you need your vitality and unless you will take hold of yourself you will lose whatever little you have and yet not change the inexorable.

The Birth Control question has taken hold of the public as never before. That ought to be a tremendous satisfaction to you. It is this growing interest which will have no little bearing on your case and which in a measure may explain the indifference on the part of the authorities to open up your case. However, I do wish there was some decision one way or another. It would be such a wonderful thing if you could make a trip across the country. It would pull you out of yourself and at the same time give the movement an impetus of great force.

We have had interesting meetings here, but with the exception of the one on the Birth Control not so large as we had hoped. The sale of literature is phenominal [sic]. We leave for St. Louis to-night where you can reach me if you answer this by return mail, c/o of the Marquette Hotel. If not, write me general delivery, Indianapolis, Ind. until the 15th.

Hoping that you are feeling better and that the enclosed amount may help to give you some joy. I am devotedly and affectionately,

E.G.