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Mrs. Lasker, I think you plan to open another chapter in your story today by beginning to talk about the voluntary agencies in the field ofhealth, and the manner in which you use them sometimes to promote the efforts in Congress.

We did do this, starting with our efforts to see that the American Cancer Society raised funds for medical research and raised larger funds, period!

The first effort that Albert Lasker and I made together was in the field of planned parenthood. Both he and I--and his family had been interested in the need for planned parenthood or birth control and had given some rather small contributions in the field through Margaret Sanger or through her organization. His sisters were liberal minded and in favor of the idea when it was considered very avant garde, and the first contribution he ever made to any organization I was interested or any effort that I was interested in was $10,000 to the Planned Parenthood Federation in the spring of 1939 for a worker to try to get more Southern states to make planned parenthood a part of their public health program. As I remember, there was someone to go into South and North Carolina and possibly Georgia to try to make it part of their state public health programs, as the need for planned parenthood was more recognized in the Southern states and there weren't many Catholics, so there wasn't so much opposition.