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And the ironic thing was that there was a million dollars available for this. . .

Yes, and this million dollars could have sparkplugged a great campaign.

When Florence Mahoney visited me in the fall, I asked her to go with me to see the head of what was then called the American Society for the Control of Cancer. They weren't going to eliminate cancer; they were just going to control it, but they were also going to control it without any research as they raised no money for research at all.

The National Director was Clarence Cook Little, long interested in research in cancer in mice. He had a research operation in Bar Harbor, Maine, where he bred mice for use in cancer laboratories on a small scale. Florence and I asked him how much the Society was then raising for cancer research, and he replied, “one at all.” We asked him, “Why not?” but he gave no satisfactory answer.

What was their purpose? Education?

Education. They sent out little pamphlets saying what the danger signals of cancer were. Well, this is helpful to some people, because if some types of cancer are found early enough, surgery did and does cure them. But there was no thought about finding out how to prevent its occurrence or how to stop it once it occurred.