| OCR Text |
Show 208 MADELYN CANNON STEWART SILVER Madelyn, who had been stunned with the condition of poor women in her world travels of 1948, 1949, and 1952, had joined with other women in Colorado to discuss the problem and suggest remedies. She wanted poor women to realize that they didn't have to have a baby every year. Her account books show substantial monthly donations to the organization begin ning in 1948 and continuing through the 1950s and until her death in 1961. In one of her talks to the Colorado Planned Parenthood group Madelyn confessed that some of the "bad press" for lim iting family size had stemmed from excesses of the 1920s when many women attempted to shake off the restraints of Puritanism and the conventions of good form, Influential in the "liberating" movement was the dance craze, women wearing their hair short, lifting hemlines to the knee, abandoning the corset, and taking illegal gulps of liquor from the flask of their dates. There was religious skepticism, the disillusionment of what was called the "Lost Generation." They had accepted Freud, they were judged harshly by their elders as being wild, they were saturated with a mood of rebellion-a new-found freedom. Madelyn, who had lived through it all, found the Twenties, she said, "strangely innocent." In fact, "it was a thrilling time in which to live and to Iove.:" One of the most successful birth control programs was in Japan, where the birthrate was dramatically reduced. When Madelyn and Harold had been in Japan in 1954 she called on Dr. Yoshio Koya, of the Institute of Public Health. He explained the progress of Planned Parenthood in Japan, and presented her with write-ups about the organization's efforts. Emphasis in Japan, Koya said, was on the health of Japanese mothers. Close 8,000 health centers throughout the nation offered training courses for physicians and midwives, and supervised an assis tance and counselling program." By the most fortunate circumstance, and to her great surprise and pleasure, Madelyn was able to visit with Margaret Sanger in Japan. Madelyn and Harold's itinerary had taken them from Tokyo, then to Nikko, then to Kamakura, a town about ten to miles south of Yokohama and at one time the seat of govern- |
