Medicine: Controller

For the convenience of the 26,000,000 married couples in the U. S., there exist 374 birth control clinics, whereas a generation ago there were none. Nevertheless, the 400 members of the American Birth Control League who met in Manhattan last week for their annual convention were disappointed because “probably not more than 200,000 married women” patronize those clinics, although 50% to 75% of the married couples in the U. S. want to space or prevent the birth of children.

A director of the A. B. C. L. and its sparkplug since Mrs. Margaret Sanger (mother of two) took to the international field, is Mrs. Allison Pierce Moore (mother of three). Mrs. Moore was agitated about the Massachusetts police who raided and closed clinics in Salem last July. That case comes up for appeal this month, and Mrs. Moore opened for the defense by declaring: “The historian of the future may record for 1937—first, great advances from the standpoint of health and eugenics; second, that in Salem, Mass, a backward step was taken, reminding us of the witch burnings in that same city 245 years ago.”

What agitated the new president of the League, Dr. Richard Norris Pierson, fashionable Manhattan obstetrician, was the need for money. He did not know just how much money the Birth Controllers would need for their year’s program. But they already have planned their spring campaign. The slogan: “Planned Parenthood.”

Dr. Pierson’s main argument for donations was an echo of a frank and factful study of the contraceptive business which FORTUNE published last week. Deplored he: “The majority of married couples are forced to worry along with drugstore methods of contraception. Millions of dollars’ worth of material—comprising 1,500 to 2,000 devices—are being distributed through drugstores, cosmetic shops, pool parlors, gas stations, house-to-house canvassers.”

Exploring a “strange, half-lighted world,” FORTUNE found that the contraceptive industry was one “with an enormous social responsibility” which “on the whole” it failed to meet. FORTUNE discovered that the contraceptive business amounts to $250,000,000 a year, which is “slightly bigger than the barbershop business and very slightly smaller than the jewelry business.” Only $38,000,000 is spent for simple male equipment, the rest for women’s. Manufacturing and retail markups ranged from 120% to 300%. “No product is very satisfactory,” found FORTUNE, and “the only method yielding even a semblance of certainty was that which the subjects were taught after coming to [a] clinic.”