National Affairs: The States

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FLORIDA: The Grand Jury, which has investigated Florida peonage cases in which convict laborers have been whipped to death, is now examining Paul Revere White, a convict who worked in a turpentine camp in Bradford County, Florida. White testified that because he was unable to do as much work as the Negro convicts he was given five lashes with an eight pound strap, each lash knocking him on the ground and cutting deep gashes in his flesh. Hearings will be continued until the jury has amassed sufficient evidence upon which to base indictments.

NEW YORK: A hearing is now going on in the Assembly Chamber of a bill to amend the state laws against disseminating contraceptive information. If the bill is enacted, it will be a victory for Mrs. Margaret Sanger, one of the world's leading birth control advocates. In the course of her long fight she has won the support of such wealthy and socially prominent women as Mrs. Thomas W. Lament, Mrs. Thomas L. Chadbourne, and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn, who helped her found the American Birth Control League and gave it financial backing.

Mrs. Sanger is a dramatic propagandist. She has challenged Federal and State authorities. Her books have been burned in London and barred from the United States mails. The Imperial Japanese government refused her a passport into the kingdom; but the people protested, whereupon she made a triumphal entry into Tokyo. Her name is a household word in Japan and China, as it is in England. A few years ago she was sentenced to a month's imprisonment for distributing illegal pamphlets on birth control.