Bok answered these heated men and told them that was exactly why
the Journal had published the editorial, and that in the next issue
there would be another for those women who might have missed his first.
He insisted that the time had come when women should learn the truth,
and that, so far as it lay in his power, he intended to see that they
did know.
The tide of public opinion at last turned toward The Ladies' Home
Journal and its campaign. Women began to realize that it had a case;
that it was working for their best interests and for those of their
children, and they decided that the question might as well be faced. Bok
now felt that his part in the work was done. He had started something
well on its way; the common sense of the public must do the rest. He had
taken the question of natural life, and stripped it of its false mystery
in the minds of hundreds of thousands of young people; had started their
inquiring minds; had shown parents the way; had made a forbidden topic a
debatable subject, discussed in open gatherings, by the press, an
increasing number of books, and in schools and colleges. He dropped the
subject, only to take up one that was more or less akin to it.
That was the public drinking-cup. Here was a distinct menace that actual
examples and figures showed was spreading the most loathsome diseases
among innocent children. In 1908, he opened up the subject by ruthlessly
publishing photographs that were unpleasantly but tremendously
convincing.
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