By Flora W. Fox — January, 1893
Editor Freethinkers Magazine:
It seems so exasperatingly strange that our laws are framed in such a manner as to protect the strong at the expense of the weak. What but the narrow, bigoted Church power, could be guilty of scourging to death our progressive thinkers? It has ever been the rule of the Church to kill what it could not conquer. Is it any wonder, then, that when Moses Harman started the Kansas Liberal thirteen years ago, to demand justice and liberty for womankind, and to oppose all tyrannical laws, that he should be immediately put upon the rack of the American-Comstock Inquisition! Harman demanded that no longer should women be the marital slaves of brutalized men, either in or out of marriage; demanded that none but welcome children with sound bodies and minds should be born, and would not be, if parents had a better knowledge of sexology. No wonder the inquisition should raise the alarm of “fire,” being sure that a quantum sufficit of hell-and-damnation (suffering) would follow each victim.
These Christian (?) “obscenity-hunters” are afflicted with a mind-disease fully equal to the smallpox, for they seem all “broke up,” if any one differs from them in opinion, and forthwith the offender must be silenced in the penitentiary.
Are the Americans babbling babes, who have not sense enough to know what literature they want to study and read? If not, then repeal the Comstock Postal Law, otherwise the ” Society for the Prevention of Vice,” named after the one in London. The latter jailed Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant, in 1877 for Mailing “Fruits of Philosophy,” a most admirable treatise. Sidney Smith says: “An informer, whether paid by the week or crime, is odious.” I say repeal these laws, and there will be no need of any informer. Let us glance at the “indelicate” condition of “borning” this law. On March 3, 1873, at the Forty-second Congress, and at a few minutes before 12 P.M., this bill, with two hundred others, was rushed through. Had liquor ruled, and a bare quorum present, called a negro, Mr. Rainey of South Carolina, to the chair, as he was about the only sober man. The signing of many of these bills was hurriedly done by President Grant. Should the temperate, intelligent, civilized American citizen feel honored in supporting this $4,000 Comstock office, to jail our thinkers and benefactors? Hardly.
A few reformers who have ignominiously suffered are here named, being but few out of over thirty-five arrested, and fifteen deaths: That of Dr. E. B. Foote, than whom no greater benefactor lives in the United States to-day, was arrested in 1876, paid a fine of $3.500 expenses attendant making it $5,000, besides damage to his practice. His crime was in giving physiological advice through a pamphlet. D. M. Bennett, the grand old man, served thirteen months in the penitentiary for selling “Cupid’s Yokes,“ a fifteen-cent book, sold everywhere now. and for which E. H. Heywood was also arrested, but got clear. Dr. Sara B. Chase, Victoria Woodhull and sister, John A. Lant, Dr. T. R. Kinget, author of “Medical Good Sense,” Mr. Wilson, Mrs. Slenker, and others, all for sending through the mail scientific instruction on sexology.
But for pure, unadulterated, purgatorial, puritanical punishment, the later cases of E. H. Heywood and Moses Harman cap the climax! Mr. Heywood served two years in Charlestown, Mass., penitentiary, for the “Mother” article. and reprinting the O’Neill letter from Lucifer, and for general “indelicate” expressions in The Word. The crime of Moses Harman has been that he has incessantly called public attention to the outrageous abuses of women by men, both in and out of marriage, and trying to induce people to have a better understanding of their sex natures, and that of their children. The Kansas Liberal evoluted into Lucifer, and Moses Harman is in prison! The end is not yet.
In 1886 E. C. Walker, Geo. Harman and Moses Harman were arrested by Comstock’s agent, and their case was postponed from time to time, resulting in releasing the two former and retaining M. Harman. Seven long years! has he not suffered enough? During the past five years he has been forced to leave his home, attend court, pay counsel, support Lucifer, and suffer the vicissitudes of prison life, which, for a cripple like Mr. Harman, cannot be easy. In 1891 served seventeen weeks in prison, released on a writ of error secured mainly through the efforts of Mark M. Pomeroy, who interviewed President Harrison and Attorney-General, personally.
To say that M. Harman has an unimpeachable character, is putting it mildly. Five-sixths of his townsmen signed a petition for his release, besides 10,000 other friends. But on June 21, 1892, Mr. Harman was notified to prepare for prison again, as Judge Caldwell had sentenced him to one year in the penitentiary. I had been so ignorant as to believe that a person had to be present when receiving sentence. The present jailing is upon the O’Neill, Whitehead and Chavannes letters. I believe, and still there is the sentence of Judge Foster, of five years yet unsettled. The Markland letter gives a case of legalized marriage-murder, and its author asks if a married woman has no rights her legal tender must respect. The supposed obscenity consists in using the dictionary term for the male organ of generation,-nothing at all about the horrible death the sick wife died, on account of too much man!
A bill, H.R. 120, to amend section 3893, brought up in Congress last January, declares: “Postmaster-General shall have full authority to declare what is non-mailable,” giving him authority ” to suppress any Newspaper containing objectionable matter.” How much better off are we than Russia? All the press of the United States should combine to repeal the unconstitutional Comstock Postal Law, before all our best men and women are politically beheaded: because it is the legitimate business of the United States District Attorney, who has ample authority, to deal with all cases against the postal laws, and he needs no emissaries of the Young Men’s Cutthroat Assassination Society to help him; neither will he take it upon himself to throttle free speech, press, mails.
“Lucifer is devoted to the emancipation of woman from sex-slavery,” and is eminently a woman’s paper, and as a woman and mother, I protest against the legal injustice to my sex, of keeping them in utter ignorance and serfdom. I fully concur with what Mr. Harman says: “To me the evidence is overwhelming that our tendencies, propensities, controlling desires, etc., are born with us, not educated into us afterwards. and as it is through and by sex that we are born into the world, it seems to need no argument to prove that sex education is the most important of all educations.” Yet who wishes to serve a term of years in the “pen,” for trying to learn? “There is but one protection against the tyranny of any class—give that class very little power, * * no matter what their claims may be, they are sure to abuse their power if much is conferred.”—Buckley’s History of Civilization.
Then, friends of free thought, the very best, wisest and most consistent way to help Harman out of the penitentiary, is to combine, demand and consummate a total repeal of the Comstock Postal Law!
