As he worked to expand access to birth control, Clarence followed a pattern of careful spending, making grants just sufficient to allow a clinic to open, and at the same time moving in response to local politics. He did not have a fortune the size of the Rockefellers; he was both unable to and uninterested in permanently subsidizing the impoverished. Working with a public often upset by birth control, he made sure that his fieldworkers educated the community to the point where members understood the importance of contraception, and would thus be willing and able to take over the work and its costs without further outside assistance. Clarence was then able to explore new frontiers and disseminate the workings of birth control more widely.