8 
PROTECTION OF MATERNITY. 
to increase the taxation of the country. The chairman of the 
Appropriations Committee in the debate in the Senate admitted 
frankly that this appropriation was only an opening, and that the 
appropriation called for in the bill would be totally inadequate to 
grapple with the subject, but that it would be simply an opening, 
and we would simply be putting the camel’s head under the tent, as 
the chairman of the Appropriations Committee expressed it. He. 
also urged that this bill be not pressed at this moment, or until the 
great financial situation confront ing this country shall be readjusted. 
It may be pointed out, Mr. Chairman, that taxation is already 
oppressive. The maximum income tax in England is only 01 h per 
cent, while in this country it is 73 per cent, and Senator Warren 
implied in his speech that the tax would be higher, and that we 
should not now give consideration to any of these paternalistic 
measures. 
I want to address myself for a moment on the question of who is 
back of this bill. I want to speak of who is back of this bill, and 
not of the text of the bill itself. It was brought up on the floor of 
the Senate by Senator Harrison, when he was asked if any of the 
people who were favoring birth control were back of this bill, and he 
said not at all. But let me tell you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, 
Miss Todd, who lobbied for this bill, was one of the chief women in 
the birth control movement in New York City. She has been 
lobbying for this bill. The birth control is not a movement which 
appeals to the sober judgment of the people, but it must be swayed 
by the sentimentality of the people. That movement is nominally 
for the protection of mothers and is supposed to bring about better 
offsprings. Now, we do not believe that that is the real motive 
back of most of the people who are favoring this bill. I do not 
impugn the motives of all of the women who are back of this bill. 
In New York City, which is the only place that I pretend to speak of, 
the birth control movement was waged chiefly among the young 
girls in the high schools. Mrs. Zabriskie, the superintendent of the 
Washington Irving High School, which is one of the biggest, if not 
the biggest, high school in the city of New York, told on our platform 
at a big meeting of ours how this birth control movement had gotten 
into the classes of the Washington Irving High School, and how they 
had put out notices of public meetings among the school girls. The 
statement was made that it was simply a movement looking toward 
free love, so that free love would be made safe. Among the Social 
ists, one of the first steps toward destroying capital—-— 
The Chairman. Do you mean to say that this bill is aimed to 
promote free love ? .... 
Mrs. Kilbreth. With some of the proponents of this bill there is 
a lurking motive of that kind, that you will have these people going 
to these places, these advisers, nontechnical, and so on; they are 
not doctors and they are not nurses, because as you realize the 
Senate cut all that part out. This provides simply, as far as I 
understand it, for nontechnical advisers and investigators to go 
throughout doing this so-called work, and in that way, if it goes 
through, you would have an extraordinary propaganda^ system, or 
possibilities for a propaganda system of that kind. Now, this is 
simply an inference anti not a matter of proof as yet. I simply 
want to suggest that these women, a great many of them, may have