The Pivot of Civilization .....................................................................................................................................1

Margaret Sanger .......................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I: A New Truth Emerges .......................................................................................................3

CHAPTER II: Conscripted Motherhood...............................................................................................10

CHAPTER III: ``Children Troop Down From Heaven....'' ....................................................................16

CHAPTER IV: The Fertility of the FeebleMinded.............................................................................23

CHAPTER V: The Cruelty of Charity ...................................................................................................29

CHAPTER VI: Neglected Factors of the World Problem .....................................................................34

CHAPTER VII: Is Revolution the Remedy? .........................................................................................39

CHAPTER VIII: Dangers of Cradle Competition .................................................................................44

CHAPTER IX: A Moral Necessity ........................................................................................................49

CHAPTER X: Science the Ally .............................................................................................................56

CHAPTER XI: Education and Expression............................................................................................62

CHAPTER XII: Woman and the Future ................................................................................................66

APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................................70

Birth control, Mrs. Sanger claims, and claims rightly, to be a question of fundamental importance at the

present time. I do not know how far one is justified in calling it the pivot or the cornerstone of a progressive

civilization. These terms involve a criticism of metaphors that may take us far away from the question in

hand. Birth Control is no new thing in human experience, and it has been practised in societies of the most

various types and fortunes. But there can be little doubt that at the present time it is a test issue between two

widely different interpretations of the word civilization, and of what is good in life and conduct. The way in

which men and women range themselves in this controversy is more simply and directly indicative of their

general intellectual quality than any other single indication. I do not wish to imply by this that the people who

oppose are more or less intellectual than the people who advocate Birth Control, but only that they have

fundamentally contrasted general ideas,that, mentally, they are DIFFERENT. Very simple, very complex,

very dull and very brilliant persons may be found in either camp, but all those in either camp have certain

attitudes in common which they share with one another, and do not share with those in the other camp.

There have been many definitions of civilization. Civilization is a complexity of count less aspects, and may

be validly defined in a great number of relationships. A reader of James Harvey Robinson's MIND IN THE

MAKING will find it very reasonable to define a civilization as a system of societymaking ideas at issue

with reality. Just so far as the system of ideas meets the needs and conditions of survival or is able to adapt

itself to the needs and conditions of survival of the society it dominates, so far will that society continue and

prosper. We are beginning to realize that in the past and under different conditions from our own, societies

have existed with systems of ideas and with methods of thought very widely contrasting with what we should

consider right and sane today. The extraordinary neolithic civilizations of the American continent that

flourished before the coming of the Europeans, seem to have got along with concepts that involved pedantries

and cruelties and a kind of systematic unreason, which find their closest parallels today in the art and

writings of certain types of lunatic. There are collections of drawings from English and American asylums

extraordinarily parallel in their spirit and quality with the Maya inscriptions of Central America. Yet these

neolithic American societies got along for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. they respected

seedtime and harvest, they bred and they maintained a grotesque and terrible order. And they produced quite

beautiful works of art. Yet their surplus of population was disposed of by an organization of sacrificial

slaughter unparalleled in the records of mankind. Many of the institutions that seemed most normal and

When we realize clearly this possibility of civilizations being based on very different sets of moral ideas and

upon different intellectual methods, we are better able to appreciate the profound significance of the schism

in our modern community, which gives us side by side, honest and intelligent people who regard Birth

Control as something essentially sweet, sane, clean, desirable and necessary, and others equally honest and

with as good a claim to intelligence who regard it as not merely unreasonable and unwholesome, but as

intolerable and abominable. We are living not in a simple and complete civilization, but in a conflict of at

least two civilizations, based on entirely different fundamental ideas, pursuing different methods and with

I will call one of these civilizations our Traditional or Authoritative Civilization. It rests upon the thing that

is, and upon the thing that has been. It insists upon respect for custom and usage; it discourages criticism and

enquiry. It is very ancient and conservative, or, going beyond conservation, it is reactionary. The vehement

hostility of many Catholic priests and prelates towards new views of human origins, and new views of moral

questions, has led many careless thinkers to identify this old traditional civilization with Christianity, but that

identification ignores the strongly revolutionary and initiatory spirit that has always animated Christianity,

and is untrue even to the realities of orthodox Catholic teaching. The vituperation of individual Catholics

must not be confused with the deliberate doctrines of the Church which have, on the whole, been

conspicuously cautious and balanced and sane in these matters. The ideas and practices of the Old

Civilization are older and more widespread than and not identifiable with either Christian or Catholic culture,

and it will be a great misfortune if the issues between the Old Civilization and the New are allowed to slip

into the deep ruts of religious controversies that are only accidentally and intermittently parallel.

Contrasted with the ancient civilization, with the Traditional disposition, which accepts institutions and moral

values as though they were a part of nature, we have what I may callwith an evident bias in its favourthe

civilization of enquiry, of experimental knowledge, Creative and Progressive Civilization. The first great

outbreak of the spirit of this civilization was in republican Greece; the martyrdom of Socrates, the fearless

Utopianism of Plato, the ambitious encyclopaedism of Aristotle, mark the dawn of a new courage and a new

wilfulness in human affairs. The fear of set limitations, of punitive and restrictive laws imposed by Fate upon

human life was visibly fading in human minds. These names mark the first clear realization that to a large

extent, and possibly to an illimitable extent, man's moral and social life and his general destiny could be

seized upon and controlled by man. Buthe must have knowledge. Said the Ancient Civilizationand it

says it still through a multitude of vigorous voices and harsh repressive acts: ``Let man learn his duty and

obey.'' Says the New Civilization, with everincreasing confidence: ``Let man know, and trust him.''

For long ages, the Old Civilization kept the New subordinate, apologetic and ineffective, but for the last two

centuries, the New has fought its way to a position of contentious equality. The two go on side by side,

jostling upon a thousand issues. The world changes, the conditions of life change rapidly, through that

development of organized science which is the natural method of the New Civilization. The old tradition

demands that national loyalties and ancient belligerence should continue. The new has produced means of

communication that break down the pens and separations of human life upon which nationalist emotion

depends. The old tradition insists upon its ancient bloodletting of war; the new knowledge carries that war

to undreamt of levels of destruction. The ancient system needed an unrestricted breeding to meet the normal

waste of life through war, pestilence, and a multitude of hitherto unpreventable diseases. The new knowledge

sweeps away the venerable checks of pestilence and disease, and confronts us with the congestions and

explosive dangers of an overpopulated world. The old tradition demands a special prolific class doomed to

labor and subservience; the new points to mechanism and to scientific organization as a means of escape from

this immemorial subjugation. Upon every main issue in life, there is this quarrel between the method of

submission and the method of knowledge. More and more do men of science and intelligent people generally

realize the hopelessness of pouring new wine into old bottles. More and more clearly do they grasp the

The New Civilization is saying to the Old now: ``We cannot go on making power for you to spend upon

international conflict. You must stop waving flags and bandying insults. You must organize the Peace of the

World; you must subdue yourselves to the Federation of all mankind. And we cannot go on giving you

health, freedom, enlargement, limitless wealth, if all our gifts to you are to be swamped by an indiscriminate

torrent of progeny. We want fewer and better children who can be reared up to their full possibilities in

unencumbered homes, and we cannot make the social life and the worldpeace we are determined to make,

with the illbred, illtrained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict upon us.'' And there at the passionate

and crucial question, this essential and fundamental question, whether procreation is still to be a superstitious

and often disastrous mystery, undertaken in fear and ignorance, reluctantly and under the sway of blind

desires, or whether it is to become a deliberate creative act, the two civilizations join issue now. It is a

conflict from which it is almost impossible to abstain. Our acts, our way of living, our social tolerance, our

In a plain and lucid style without any emotional appeals, Mrs. Margaret Sanger sets out the case of the new

order against the old. There have been several able books published recently upon the question of Birth

Control, from the point of view of a woman's personal life, and from the point of view of married happiness,

but I do not think there has been any book as yet, popularly accessible, which presents this matter from the

point of view of the public good, and as a necessary step to the further improvement of human life as a whole.

I am inclined to think that there has hitherto been rather too much personal emotion spent upon this business

and far too little attention given to its broader aspects. Mrs. Sanger with her extraordinary breadth of outlook

and the real scientific quality of her mind, has now redressed the balance. She has lifted this question from

out of the warm atmosphere of troubled domesticity in which it has hitherto been discussed, to its proper

This book aims to be neither the first word on the tangled problems of human society today, nor the last. My

aim has been to emphasize, by the use of concrete and challenging examples and neglected facts, the need of

a new approach to individual and social problems. Its central challenge is that civilization, in any true sense

of the word, is based upon the control and guidance of the great natural instinct of Sex. Mastery of this force

It may be objected that in the following pages I have rushed in where academic scholars have feared to tread,

and that as an active propagandist I am lacking in the scholarship and documentary preparation to undertake

such a stupendous task. My only defense is that, from my point of view at least, too many are already

studying and investigating social problems from without, with a sort of Olympian detachment. And on the

other hand, too few of those who are engaged in this endless war for human betterment have found the time

to give to the world those truths not always hidden but practically unquarried, which may be secured only

Of late, we have been treated to accounts written by wellmeaning ladies and gentlemen who have assumed

clever disguises and have gone out to workfor a week or a monthamong the proletariat. But can we thus

learn anything new of the fundamental problems of working men, working women, working children?

Something, perhaps, but not those great central problems of Hunger and Sex. We have been told that only

those who themselves have suffered the pangs of starvation can truly understand Hunger. You might come

into the closest contact with a starving man; yet, if you were yourself wellfed, no amount of sympathy could

give you actual insight into the psychology of his suffering. This suggests an objective and a subjective

approach to all social problems. Whatever the weakness of the subjective (or, if you prefer, the feminine)

approach, it has at least the virtue that its conclusions are tested by experience. Observation of facts about

you, intimate subjective reaction to such facts, generate in your mind certain fundamental

convictions,truths you can ignore no more than you can ignore such truths as come as the fruit of bitter but

Regarding myself, I may say that my experience in the course of the past twelve or fifteen years has been of a

type to force upon me certain convictions that demand expression. For years I had believed that the solution

of all our troubles was to be found in welldefined programmes of political and legislative action. At first, I

concentrated my whole attention upon these, only to discover that politicians and lawmakers are just as

confused and as much at a loss in solving fundamental problems as anyone else. And I am speaking here not

so much of the corrupt and ignorant politician as of those idealists and reformers who think that by the ballot

society may be led to an earthly paradise. They may honestly desire and intend to do great things. They may

positively glowbefore electionwith enthusiasm at the prospect they imagine political victory may open

to them. Time after time, I was struck by the change in their attitude after the briefest enjoyment of this

illusory power. Men are elected during some wave of reform, let us say, elected to legislate into practical

working existence some great ideal. They want to do big things; but a short time in office is enough to show

the political idealist that he can accomplish nothing, that his reform must be debased and dragged into the

dust, so that even if it becomes enacted, it may be not merely of no benefit, but a positive evil. It is scarcely

necessary to emphasize this point. It is an accepted commonplace of American politics. So much of life, so

large a part of all our social problems, moreover, remains untouched by political and legislative action. This

is an old truth too often ignored by those who plan political campaigns upon the most superficial knowledge

My own eyes were opened to the limitations of political action when, as an organizer for a political group in

New York, I attended by chance a meeting of women laundryworkers who were on strike. We believed we

could help these women with a legislative measure and asked their support. ``Oh! that stuff!'' exclaimed one

of these women. ``Don't you know that we women might be dead and buried if we waited for politicians and

lawmakers to right our wrongs?'' This set me to thinkingnot merely of the immediate problembut to

asking myself how much any male politician could understand of the wrongs inflicted upon poor working

I threw the weight of my study and activity into the economic and industrial struggle. Here I discovered men

and women fired with the glorious vision of a new world, of a proletarian world emancipated, a Utopian

world,it glowed in romantic colours for the majority of those with whom I came in closest contact. The

next step, the immediate step, was another matter, less romantic and too often less encouraging. In their

ardor, some of the labor leaders of that period almost convinced us that the millennium was just around the

corner. Those were the prewar days of dramatic strikes. But even when most under the spell of the new

vision, the sight of the overburdened wives of the strikers, with their puny babies and their broods of

underfed children, made us stop and think of a neglected factor in the march toward our earthly paradise. It

was well enough to ask the poor men workers to carry on the battle against economic injustice. But what

results could be expected when they were forced in addition to carry the burden of their evergrowing

families? This question loomed large to those of us who came into intimate contact with the women and

children. We saw that in the final analysis the real burden of economic and industrial warfare was thrust upon

the frail, alltoo frail shoulders of the children, the very babiesthe coming generation. In their wan faces,

in their undernourished bodies, would be indelibly written the bitter defeat of their parents.

The eloquence of those who led the underpaid and halfstarved workers could no longer, for me, at least, ring

with conviction. Something more than the purely economic interpretation was involved. The bitter struggle

for bread, for a home and material comfort, was but one phase of the problem. There was another phase,

perhaps even more fundamental, that had been absolutely neglected by the adherents of the new dogmas.

That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great

fundamental instinct of sex was expressing itself in these evergrowing broods, in the prosperity of the slum

midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker. In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated

Labor, I was driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was not at least partially

responsible, along with industrial injustice, for the widespread misery of the world.

To find an answer to this problem which at that point in my experience I could not solve, I determined to

study conditions in Europe. Perhaps there I might discover a new approach, a great illumination. Just before

the outbreak of the war, I visited France, Spain, Germany and Great Britain. Everywhere I found the same

dogmas and prejudices among labor leaders, the same intense but limited vision, the same insistence upon the

purely economic phases of human nature, the same belief that if the problem of hunger were solved, the

question of the women and children would take care of itself. In this attitude I discovered, then, what seemed

to me to be purely masculine reasoning; and because it was purely masculine, it could at best be but half true.

Feminine insight must be brought to bear on all questions; and here, it struck me, the fallacy of the masculine,

the alltoo masculine, was brutally exposed. I was encouraged and strengthened in this attitude by the

support of certain leaders who had studied human nature and who had reached the same conclusion: that

civilization could not solve the problem of Hunger until it recognized the titanic strength of the sexual

instinct. In Spain, I found that Lorenzo Portet, who was carrying on the work of the martyred Francisco

Ferrer, had reached this same conclusion. In Italy, Enrico Malatesta, the valiant leader who was after the war

to play so dramatic a r�le, was likewise combating the current dogma of the orthodox Socialists. In Berlin,

Rudolph Rocker was engaged in the thankless task of puncturing the articles of faith of the orthodox Marxian

religion. It is quite needless to add that these men who had probed beneath the surface of the problem and had

diagnosed so much more completely the complex malady of contemporary society were intensely disliked by

The gospel of Marx had, however, been too long and too thoroughly inculcated into the minds of millions of

workers in Europe, to be discarded. It is a flattering doctrine, since it teaches the laborer that all the fault is

with someone else, that he is the victim of circumstances, and not even a partner in the creation of his own

and his child's misery. Not without significance was the additional discovery that I made. I found that the

Marxian influence tended to lead workers to believe that, irrespective of the health of the poor mothers, the

earning capacity of the wageearning fathers, or the upbringing of the children, increase of the proletarian

family was a benefit, not a detriment to the revolutionary movement. The greater the number of hungry

mouths, the emptier the stomachs, the more quickly would the ``Class War'' be precipitated. The greater the

increase in population among the proletariat, the greater the incentive to revolution. This may not be sound

Marxian theory; but it is the manner in which it is popularly accepted. It is the popular belief, wherever the

Marxian influence is strong. This I found especially in England and Scotland. In speaking to groups of

dockworkers on strike in Glasgow, and before the communist and co operative guilds throughout England, I

discovered a prevailing opposition to the recognition of sex as a factor in the perpetuation of poverty. The

leaders and theorists were immovable in their opposition. But when once I succeeded in breaking through the

surface opposition of the rank and file of the workers, I found that they were willing to recognize the power

So central, so fundamental in the life of every man and woman is this problem that they need be taught no

elaborate or imposing theory to explain their troubles. To approach their problems by the avenue of sex and

reproduction is to reveal at once their fundamental relations to the whole economic and biological structure of

society. Their interest is immediately and completely awakened. But always, as I soon discovered, the ideas

and habits of thought of these submerged masses have been formed through the Press, the Church, through

political institutions, all of which had built up a conspiracy of silence around a subject that is of no less vital

importance than that of Hunger. A great wall separates the masses from those imperative truths that must be

known and flung wide if civilization is to be saved. As currently constituted, Church, Press, Education seem

today organized to exploit the ignorance and the prejudices of the masses, rather than to light their way to

Such was the situation in 1914, when I returned to America, determined, since the exclusively masculine

point of view had dominated too long, that the other half of the truth should be made known. The Birth

Control movement was launched because it was in this form that the whole relation of woman and

childeternal emblem of the future of societycould be more effectively dramatized. The amazing growth

of this movement dates from the moment when in my home a small group organized the first Birth Control

League. Since then we have been criticized for our choice of the term ``Birth Control'' to express the idea of

modern scientific contraception. I have yet to hear any criticism of this term that is not based upon some false

and hypocritical sense of modesty, or that does not arise out of a semi prurient misunderstanding of its aim.

On the other hand: nothing better expresses the idea of purposive, responsible, and selfdirected guidance of

Those critics who condemn Birth Control as a negative, destructive idea, concerned only with

selfgratification, might profitably open the nearest dictionary for a definition of ``control.'' There they would

discover that the verb ``control'' means to exercise a directing, guiding, or restraining influence;to direct, to

regulate, to counteract. Control is guidance, direction, foresight. it implies intelligence, forethought and

responsibility. They will find in the Standard Dictionary a quotation from Lecky to the effect that, ``The

greatest of all evils in politics is power without control.'' In what phase of life is not ``power without control''

an evil? Birth Control, therefore, means not merely the limitation of births, but the application of intelligent

guidance over the reproductive power. It means the substitution of reason and intelligence for the blind play

The term ``Birth Control'' had the immense practical advantage of compressing into two short words the

answer to the inarticulate demands of millions of men and women in all countries. At the time this slogan was

formulated, I had not yet come to the complete realization of the great truth that had been thus crystallized. It

was the response to the overwhelming, heartbreaking appeals that came by every mail for aid and advice,

which revealed a great truth that lay dormant, a truth that seemed to spring into full vitality almost over

Nor could I then have realized the number and the power of the enemies who were to be aroused into activity

by this idea. So completely was I dominated by this conviction of the efficacy of ``control,'' that I could not

until later realize the extent of the sacrifices that were to be exacted of me and of those who supported my

campaign. The very idea of Birth Control resurrected the spirit of the witchhunters of Salem. Could they

have usurped the power, they would have burned us at the stake. Lacking that power, they used the weapon

of suppression, and invoked medieval statutes to send us to jail. These tactics had an effect the very opposite

to that intended. They demonstrated the vitality of the idea of Birth Control, and acted as counterirritant on

the actively intelligent sections of the American community. Nor was the interest aroused confined merely to

America. The neoMalthusian movement in Great Britain with its history of undaunted bravery, came to our

support; and I had the comfort of knowing that the finest minds of England did not hesitate a moment in the

In America, on the other hand, I found from the beginning until very recently that the socalled intellectuals

exhibited a curious and almost inexplicable reticence in supporting Birth Control. They even hesitated to

voice any public protest against the campaign to crush us which was inaugurated and sustained by the most

reactionary and sinister forces in American life. It was not inertia or any lack of interest on the part of the

masses that stood in our way. It was the indifference of the intellectual leaders.

Writers, teachers, ministers, editors, who form a class dictating, if not creating, public opinion, are, in this

country, singularly inhibited or unconscious of their true function in the community. One of their first duties,

it is certain, should be to champion the constitutional right of free speech and free press, to welcome any idea

that tends to awaken the critical attention of the great American public. But those who reveal themselves as

fully cognizant of this public duty are in the minority, and must possess more than average courage to survive

One of the chief aims of the present volume is to stimulate American intellectuals to abandon the mental

habits which prevent them from seeing human nature as a whole, instead of as something that can be

pigeonholed into various compartments or classes. Birth Control affords an approach to the study of

humanity because it cuts through the limitations of current methods. It is economic, biological, psychological

and spiritual in its aspects. It awakens the vision of mankind moving and changing, of humanity growing and

developing, coming to fruition, of a race creative, flowering into beautiful expression through talent and

As a social programme, Birth Control is not merely concerned with population questions. In this respect, it is

a distinct step in advance of earlier Malthusian doctrines, which concerned themselves chiefly with

economics and population. Birth Control concerns itself with the spirit no less than the body. It looks for the

liberation of the spirit of woman and through woman of the child. Today motherhood is wasted, penalized,

tortured. Children brought into the world by unwilling mother suffer an initial handicap that cannot be

measured by cold statistics. Their lives are blighted from the start. To substantiate this fact, I have chosen to

present the conclusions of reports on Child Labor and records of defect and delinquency published by

organizations with no bias in favour of Birth Control. The evidence is before us. It crowds in upon us from all

sides. But prior to this new approach, no attempt had been made to correlate the effects of the blind and

The duty of the educator and the intellectual creator of public opinion is, in this connection, of the greatest

importance. For centuries official moralists, priests, clergymen and teachers, statesmen and politicians have

preached the doctrine of glorious and divine fertility. Today, we are confronted with the worldwide

spectacle of the realization of this doctrine. It is not without significance that the moron and the imbecile set

the pace in living up to this teaching, and that the intellectuals, the educators, the archbishops, bishops,

priests, who are most insistent on it, are the staunchest adherents in their own lives of celibacy and

nonfertility. It is time to point out to the champions of unceasing and indiscriminate fertility the results of

One of the greatest difficulties in giving to the public a book of this type is the impossibility of keeping pace

with the events and changes of a movement that is now, throughout the world, striking root and growing. The

changed attitude of the American Press indicates that enlightened public opinion no longer tolerates a policy

of silence upon a question of the most vital importance. Almost simultaneously in England and America, two

incidents have broken through the prejudice and the guarded silence of centuries. At the church Congress in

Birmingham, October 12, 1921, Lord Dawson, the king's physician, in criticizing the report of the Lambeth

Conference concerning Birth Control, delivered an address defending this practice. Of such bravery and

eloquence that it could not be ignored, this address electrified the entire British public. It aroused a storm of

abuse, and yet succeeded, as no propaganda could, in mobilizing the forces of progress and intelligence in the

Just one month later, the First American Birth Control Conference culminated in a significant and dramatic

incident. At the close of the conference a mass meeting was scheduled in the Town Hall, New York City, to

discuss the morality of Birth Control. Mr. Harold Cox, editor of the Edinburgh Review, who had come to

New York to attend the conference, was to lead the discussion. It seemed only natural for us to call together

scientists, educators, members of the medical profession, and theologians of all denominations, to ask their

opinion upon this uncertain and important phase of the controversy. Letters were sent to eminent men and

women in different parts of the world. In this letter we asked the following questions:

1. Is overpopulation a menace to the peace of the world? 2. Would the legal dissemination of scientific Birth

Control information, through the medium of clinics by the medical profession, be the most logical method of

checking the problem of overpopulation? 3. Would knowledge of Birth Control change the moral attitude of

men and women toward the marriage bond, or lower the moral standards of the youth of the country? 4. Do

you believe that knowledge which enables parents to limit their families will make for human happiness, and

We sent this questionnaire not only to those who we thought might agree with us, but we sent it also to our

When I arrived at the Town Hall the entrance was guarded by policemen. They told me there would be no

meeting. Before my arrival r executives had been greeted by Monsignor Dineen, secretary of Archbishop

Hayes, of the Roman Catholic archdiocese, who informed them that the meeting would be prohibited on the

ground that it was contrary to public morals. The police had closed the doors. When they opened them to

permit the exit of the large audience which had gathered, Mr. Cox and I entered. I attempted to exercise my

constitutional right of free speech, but was prohibited and arrested. Miss Mary Winsor, who protested against

this unwarranted arrest, was likewise dragged off to the police station. The case was dismissed the following

morning. The ecclesiastic instigators of the affair were conspicuous by their absence from the police court.

But the incident was enough to expose the opponents of Birth Control and the extreme methods they used to

combat our progress. The case was too flagrant, too gross an affront, to pass unnoticed by the newspapers.

The progress of our movement was indicated in the changed attitude of the American Press, which had

perceived the danger to the public of the unlawful tactics used by the enemies of Birth Control in preventing

No social idea has inspired its advocates with more bravery, tenacity, and courage than Birth Control. From

the early days of Francis Place and Richard Carlile, to those of the Drysdales and Edward Trulove, of

Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant, its advocates have faced imprisonment and ostracism. In the whole history

of the English movement, there has been no more courageous figure than that of the venerable Alice Drysdale

Vickery, the undaunted torchbearer who has bridged the silence of fortyfour yearssince the

BradlaughBesant trial. She stands head and shoulders above the professional feminists. Serenely has she

withstood jeers and jests. Today, she continues to point out to the younger generation which is devoted to

The First American Birth Control Conference, held at the same time as the Washington Conference for the

Limitation of Armaments, marks a turningpoint in our approach to social problems. The Conference made

evident the fact that in every field of scientific and social endeavour the most penetrating thinkers are now

turning to the consideration of our problem as a fundamental necessity to American civilization. They are

coming to see that a QUALITATIVE factor as opposed to a QUANTITATIVE one is of primary importance

Certain fundamental convictions should be made clear here. The programme for Birth. Control is not a

charity. It is not aiming to interfere in the private lives of poor people, to tell them how many children they

should have, nor to sit in judgment upon their fitness to become parents. It aims, rather, to awaken

responsibility, to answer the demand for a scientific means by which and through which each human life may

be selfdirected and selfcontrolled. The exponent of Birth Control, in short, is convinced that social

regeneration, no less than individual regeneration, must come from within. Every potential parent, and

especially every potential mother, must be brought to an acute realization of the primary and individual

responsibility of bringing children into this world. Not until the parents of this world are given control over

their reproductive faculties will it be possible to improve the quality of the generations of the future, or even

to maintain civilization at its present level. Only when given intelligent mastery of the procreative powers can

the great mass of humanity be aroused to a realization of responsibility of parenthood. We have come to the

conclusion, based on widespread investigation and experience, that education for parenthood must be based

upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from

above, a set of rules devised by highminded theorists who fail to take into account the living conditions and

desires of the masses, can never be of the slightest value in effecting change in the customs of the people.

Systems so imposed in the past have revealed their woeful inability to prevent the sexual and racial chaos into

The universal demand for practical education in Birth Control is one of the most hopeful signs that the

masses themselves today possess the divine spark of regeneration. It remains for the courageous and the

enlightened to answer this demand, to kindle the spark, to direct a thorough education in sex hygiene based

Birth Control is thus the entering wedge for the educator. In answering the needs of these thousands upon

thousands of submerged mothers, it is possible to use their interest as the foundation for education in

prophylaxis, hygiene and infant welfare. The potential mother can then be shown that maternity need not be

slavery but may be the most effective avenue to selfdevelopment and selfrealization. Upon this basis only

The lack of balance between the birthrate of the ``unfit'' and the ``fit,'' admittedly the greatest present

menace to the civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these

two classes. The example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feebleminded, the mentally defective, the

poverty stricken, should not be held up for emulation to the mentally and physically fit, and therefore less

fertile, parents of the educated and welltodo classes. On the contrary, the most urgent problem to day is

how to limit and discourage the overfertility of the mentally and physically defective. Possibly drastic and

Spartan methods may be forced upon American society if it continues complacently to encourage the chance

To effect the salvation of the generations of the futurenay, of the generations of todayour greatest

need, first of all, is the ability to face the situation without flinching; to cooperate in the formation of a code

of sexual ethics based upon a thorough biological and psychological understanding of human nature; and then

to answer the questions and the needs of the people with all the intelligence and honesty at our command. If

we can summon the bravery to do this, we shall best be serving the pivotal interests of civilization.

To conclude this introduction: my initiation, as I have confessed, was primarily an emotional one. My interest

in Birth Control was awakened by experience. Research and investigation have followed. Our effort has been

to raise our program from the plane of the emotional to the plane of the scientific. Any social progress, it is

my belief, must purge itself of sentimentalism and pass through the crucible of science. We are willing to

submit Birth Control to this test. It is part of the purpose of this book to appeal to the scientist for aid, to

arouse that interest which will result in widespread research and investigation. I believe that my personal

experience with this idea must be that of the race at large. We must temper our emotion and enthusiasm with

the impersonal determination of science. We must unite in the task of creating an instrument of steel, strong

Motherhood, which is not only the oldest but the most important profession in the world, has received few of

the benefits of civilization. It is a curious fact that a civilization devoted to motherworship, that publicly

professes a worship of mother and child, should close its eyes to the appalling waste of human life and human

energy resulting from those dire consequences of leaving the whole problem of childbearing to chance and

blind instinct. It would be untrue to say that among the civilized nations of the world today, the profession

of motherhood remains in a barbarous state. The bitter truth is that motherhood, among the larger part of our

population, does not rise to the level of the barbarous or the primitive. Conditions of life among the primitive

tribes were rude enough and severe enough to prevent the unhealthy growth of sentimentality, and to

discourage the irresponsible production of defective children. Moreover, there is ample evidence to indicate

that even among the most primitive peoples the function of maternity was recognized as of primary and

If we define civilization as increased and increasing responsibility based on vision and foresight, it becomes

painfully evident that the profession of motherhood as practised today is in no sense civilized. Educated

people derive their ideas of maternity for the most part, either from the experience of their own set, or from

visits to impressive hospitals where women of the upper classes receive the advantages of modern science

and modern nursing. From these charming pictures they derive their complacent views of the beauty of

motherhood and their confidence for the future of the race. The other side of the picture is revealed only to

the trained investigator, to the patient and impartial observer who visits not merely one or two ``homes of the

poor,'' but makes detailed studies of town after town, obtains the history of each mother, and finally correlates

and analyzes this evidence. Upon such a basis are we able to draw conclusions concerning this strange

Every year I receive thousands of letters from women in all parts of America, desperate appeals to aid them

to extricate themselves from the trap of compulsory maternity. Lest I be accused of bias and exaggeration in

drawing my conclusions from these painful human documents, I prefer to present a number of typical cases

recorded in the reports of the United States Government, and in the evidence of trained and impartial

investigators of social agencies more generally opposed to the doctrine of Birth Control than biased in favor

A perusal of the reports on infant mortality in widely varying industrial centers of the United States,

published during the past decade by the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor, forces

us to a realization of the immediate need of detailed statistics concerning the practice and results of

uncontrolled breeding. Some such effort as this has been made by the Galton Laboratory of National

Eugenics in Great Britain. The Children's Bureau reports only incidentally present this impressive evidence.

They fail to coordinate it. While there is always the danger of drawing giant conclusions from pigmy

premises, here is overwhelming evidence concerning irresponsible parenthood that is ignored by

I have chosen a small number of typical cases from these reports. Though drawn from widely varying

sources, they all emphasize the greatest crime of modern civilizationthat of permitting motherhood to be

left to blind chance, and to be mainly a function of the most abysmally ignorant and irresponsible classes of

Here is a fairly typical case from Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A woman of thirty eight years had undergone

thirteen pregnancies in seventeen years. Of eleven live births and two premature stillbirths, only two children

were alive at the time of the government agent's visit. The second to eighth, the eleventh and the thirteenth

had died of bowel trouble, at ages ranging from three weeks to four months. The only cause of these deaths

the mother could give was that ``food did not agree with them.'' She confessed quite frankly that she believed

in feeding babies, and gave them everything anybody told her to give them. She began to give them at the age

of one month, bread, potatoes, egg, crackers, etc. For the last baby that died, this mother had bought a goat

and gave its milk to the baby; the goat got sick, but the mother continued to give her baby its milk until the

goat went dry. Moreover, she directed the feeding of her daughter's baby until it died at the age of three

months. ``On account of the many children she had had, the neighbors consider her an authority on baby

Lest this case be considered too tragically ridiculous to be accepted as typical, the reader may verify it with

an almost interminable list of similar cases.[1] Parental irresponsibility is significantly illustrated in another

A mother who had four live births and two stillbirths in twelve years lost all of her babies during their first

year. She was so anxious that at least one child should live that she consulted a physician concerning the care

of the last one. ``Upon his advice,'' to quote the government report, ``she gave up her twenty boarders

immediately after the child's birth, and devoted all her time to it. Thinks she did not stop her hard work soon

enough; says she has always worked too hard, keeping boarders in this country, and cutting wood and

carrying it and water on her back in the old country. Also says the carrying of water and cases of beer in this

country is a great strain on her.'' But the illuminating point in this case is that the father was furious because

all the babies died. To show his disrespect for the wife who could only give birth to babies that died, he wore

a red necktie to the funeral of the last. Yet this woman, the government agent reports, would follow and profit

It is true that the cases reported from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, do not represent completely ``Americanized''

families. This lack does not prevent them, however, by their unceasing fertility from producing the

Americans of tomorrow. Of the more immediate conditions surrounding childbirth, we are presented with

On five o'clock on Wednesday evening she went to her sister's house to return a washboard, after finishing a

day's washing. The baby was born while she was there. Her sister was too young to aid her in any way. She

was not accustomed to a midwife, she confessed. She cut the cord herself, washed the newborn baby at her

sister's house, walked home, cooked supper for her boarders, and went to bed by eight o'clock. The next day

she got up and ironed. This tired her out, she said, so she stayed in bed for two whole days. She milked cows

the day after the birth of the baby and sold the milk as well. Later in the week, when she became tired, she

hired someone to do that portion of her work. This woman, we are further informed, kept cows, chickens, and

lodgers, and earned additional money by doing laundry and charwork. At times her husband deserted her. His

earnings amounted to $1.70 a day, while a fifteenyearold son earned $1.10 in a coal mine.

One searches in vain for some picture of sacred motherhood, as depicted in popular plays and motion

pictures, something more normal and encouraging. Then one comes to the bitter realization that these, in very

truth, are the ``normal'' cases, not the exceptions. The exceptions are apt to indicate, instead, the close

relationship of this irresponsible and chance parenthood to the great social problems of feeblemindedness,

Nor is this type of motherhood confined to newly arrived immigrant mothers, as a government report from

Akron, Ohio, sufficiently indicates. In this city, the government agents discovered that more than five

hundred mothers were ignorant of the accepted principles of infant feeding, or, if familiar with them, did not

practise them. ``This ignorance or indifference was not confined to foreignborn mothers....A native mother

reported that she gave her twoweeksold baby ice cream, and that before his sixth month, he was sitting at

the table `eating everything.''' This was in a town in which there were comparatively few cases of extreme

The degradation of motherhood, the damnation of the next generation before it is born, is exposed in all its

catastrophic misery, in the reports of the National Consumers' League. In her report of living conditions

among nightworking mothers in thirtynine textile mills in Rhode Island, based on exhaustive studies, Mrs.

``When the worker, cruelly tired from ten hours' work, comes home in the early morning, she usually

scrambles together breakfast for the family. Eating little or nothing herself, and that hastily, she tumbles into

bednot the immaculate bed in an airy bedroom with dark shades, but one still warm from its night

occupants, in a stuffy little bedroom, darkened imperfectly if at all. After sleeping exhaustedly for an hour

perhaps she bestirs herself to get the children off to school, or care for insistent little ones, too young to

appreciate that mother is tired out and must sleep. Perhaps later in the forenoon, she again drops into a fitful

sleep, or she may have to wait until after dinner. There is the midday meal to get, and, if her husband cannot

come home, his dinnerpail to pack with a hot lunch to be sent or carried to him. If he is not at home, the

lunch is rather a makeshift. The midday meal is scarcely over before supper must be thought of. This has to

be eaten hurriedly before the family are ready, for the mother must be in the mill at work, by 6, 6:30 or 7

P.M....Many women in their inadequate English, summed up their daily routine by, ``Oh, me all time tired.

``Only sixteen of the 166 married women were without children; thirty two had three or more; twenty had

children on year old or under. There were 160 children under schoolage, below six years, and 246 of school

``A woman in ordinary circumstances,'' adds this impartial investigator, ``with a husband and three children,

if she does her own work, feels that her hands are full. How these millworkers, many of them fraillooking,

and many with confessedly poor health, can ever do two jobs is a mystery, when they are seen in their homes

dragging about, pale, holloweyed and listless, often needlessly sharp and impatient with the children. These

children are not only not mothered, never cherished, they are nagged and buffeted. The mothers are not

superwomen, and like all human beings, they have a certain amount of strength and when that breaks, their

We are presented with a vivid picture of one of these slavemothers: a woman of thirtyeight who looks at

least fifty with her worn, furrowed face. Asked why she had been working at night for the past two years, she

pointed to a sixmonths old baby she was carrying, to the five small children swarming about her, and

answered laconically, ``Too much children!'' She volunteered the information that there had been two more

who had died. When asked why they had died, the poor mother shrugged her shoulders listlessly, and replied,

``Don't know.'' In addition to bearing and rearing these children, her work would sap the vitality of any

ordinary person. ``She got home soon after four in the morning, cooked breakfast for the family and ate

hastily herself. At 4.30 she was in bed, staying there until eight. But part of that time was disturbed for the

children were noisy and the apartment was a tiny, dingy place in a basement. At eight she started the three

oldest boys to school, and cleaned up the debris of breakfast and of supper the night before. At twelve she

carried a hot lunch to her husband and had dinner ready for the three school children. In the afternoon, there

were again dishes and cooking, and caring for three babies aged five, three years, and six months. At five,

supper was ready for the family. The mother ate by herself and was off to work at 5:45.''

Another of the nightworking mothers was a frail looking Frenchwoman of twentyseven years, with a

husband and five children ranging from eight years to fourteen months. Three other children had died. When

visited, she was doing a huge washing. She was forced into night work to meet the expenses of the family.

She estimated that she succeeded in getting five hours' sleep during the day. ``I take my baby to bed with me,

but he cries, and my little fouryearold boy cries, too, and comes in to make me get up, so you can't call that

The problem among unmarried women or those without family is not the same, this investigator points out.

``They sleep longer by day than they normally would by night.'' We are also informed that pregnant women

work at night in the mills, sometimes up to the very hour of delivery. ``It's queer,'' exclaimed a woman

supervisor of one of the Rhode Island mills, ``but some women, both on the day and the night shift, will stick

to their work right up to the last minute, and will use every means to deceive you about their condition. I go

around and talk to them, but make little impression. We have had several narrow escapes....A Polish mother

with five children had worked in a mill by day or by night, ever since her marriage, stopping only to have her

babies. One little girl had died several years ago, and the youngest child, says Mrs. Kelley, did not look

promising. It had none of the charm of babyhood; its body and clothing were filthy; and its lower lip and chin

It should be remembered that the Consumers' League, which publishes these reports on women in industry, is

not advocating Birth Control education, but is aiming ``to awaken responsibility for conditions under which

goods are produced, and through investigation, education and legislation, to mobilize public opinion in behalf

of enlightened standards for workers and honest products for all.'' Nevertheless, in Miss Agnes de Lima's

report of conditions in Passaic, New Jersey, we find the same tale of penalized, prostrate motherhood, bearing

the crushing burden of economic injustice and cruelty; the same blind but overpowering instincts of love and

hunger driving young women into the factories to work, night in and night out, to support their procession of

uncared for and undernourished babies. It is the married women with young children who work on the

infernolike shifts. They are driven to it by the low wages of their husbands. They choose night work in order

to be with their children in the daytime. They are afraid of the neglect and illtreatment the children might

receive at the hands of paid caretakers. Thus they condemn themselves to eighteen or twenty hours of daily

toil. Surely no mother with three, four, five or six children can secure much rest by day.

``Take almost any house''we read in the report of conditions in New Jersey``knock at almost any door

and you will find a weary, tousled woman, halfdressed, doing her housework, or trying to snatch an hour or

two of sleep after her long night of work in the mill. ...The facts are there for any one to see; the hopeless and

exhausted woman, her cluttered three or four rooms, the swarm of sickly and neglected children.''

These women claimed that night work was unavoidable, as their husbands received so little pay. This in spite

of all our vaunted ``high wages.'' Only three women were found who went into the drudgery of night work

without being obliged to do so. Two had no children, and their husbands' earnings were sufficient for their

needs. One of these was saving for a trip to Europe, and chose the night shift because she found it less

strenuous than the day. Only four of the hundred women reported upon were unmarried, and ninetytwo of

the married women had children. Of the four childless married women, one had lost two children, and

another was recovering from a recent miscarriage. There were five widows. The average number of children

was three in a family. Thirtynine of the mothers had four or more. Three of them had six children, and six of

them had seven children apiece. These women ranged between the ages of twentyfive and forty, and more

than half the children were less than seven years of age. Most of them had babies of one, two and three years

At the risk of repetition, we quote one of the typical cases reported by Miss De Lima with features practically

identical with the individual cases reported from Rhode Island. It is of a mother who comes home from work

at 5:30 every morning, falls on the bed from exhaustion, arises again at eight or nine o'clock to see that the

older children are sent off to school. A son of five, like the rest of the children, is on a diet of coffee,milk

costs too much. After the children have left for school, the overworked mother again tries to sleep, though the

small son bothers her a great deal. Besides, she must clean the house, wash, iron, mend, sew and prepare the

midday meal. She tries to snatch a little sleep in the afternoon, but explains: ``When you got big family, all

time work. Nighttime in mill drag so long, so long; daytime in home go so quick.'' By five, this mother

must get the family's supper ready, and dress for the night's work, which begins at seven. The investigator

further reports: ``The next day was a holiday, and for a diversion, Mrs. N. thought she would go up to the

cemetery: `I got some children up there,' she explained, `and same time I get some air. No, I don't go

Here again, as in all reports on women in industry, we find the prevalence of pregnant women working on

nightshifts, often to the very day of their delivery. ``Oh, yes, plenty women, big bellies, work in the night

time,'' one of the toiling mothers volunteered. ``Shame they go, but what can do?'' The abuse was general.

Many mothers confessed that owing to poverty they themselves worked up to the last week or even day

before the birth of their children. Births were even reported in one of the mills during the night shift. A

foreman told of permitting a nightworking woman to leave at 6.30 one morning, and of the birth of her baby

at 7.30. Several women told of leaving the dayshift because of pregnancy and of securing places on the

nightshift where their condition was less conspicuous, and the bosses more tolerant. One mother defended her

right to stay at work, says the report, claiming that as long as she could do her work, it was nobody's

business. In a doorway sat a sickly and bloodless woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Her first baby

had died of general debility. She had worked at night in the mill until the very day of its birth. This time the

boss had told her she could stay if she wished, but reminded her of what had happened last time. So she had

Again and again we read the same story, which varied only in detail: the mother in the three black rooms; the

sagging porch overflowing with pale and sickly children; the overworked mother of seven, still nursing her

youngest, who is two or three months old. Worn and haggard, with a skeletonlike child pulling at her breast,

the women tries to make the investigator understand. The grandmother helps to interpret. ``She never sleeps,''

explains the old woman, ``how can she with so many children?'' She works up to the last moment before her

Another apartment in the same house; another of those nightworking mothers, who had just stopped because

she is pregnant. The boss had kindly given her permission to stay on, but she found the reaching on the heavy

spinning machines too hard. Three children, ranging in age from five to twelve years, are all sickly and

forlorn and must be cared for. There is a tubercular husband, who is unable to work steadily, and is able to

bring in only $12 a week. Two of the babies had died, one because the mother had returned to work too soon

after its birth and had lost her milk. She had fed him tea and bread, ``so he died.''

The most heartrending feature of it allin these homes of the mothers who work at nightis the expression

in the faces of the children; children of chance, dressed in rags, undernourished, underclothed, all predisposed

The reports on infant mortality published under the direction of the Children's Bureau substantiate for the

United States of America the findings of the Galton Laboratory for Great Britain, showing that an abnormally

high rate of fertility is usually associated with poverty, filth, disease, feeblemindedness and a high infant

mortality rate. It is a commonplace truism that a high birthrate is accompanied by a high infantmortality

rate. No longer is it necessary to dissociate cause and effect, to try to determine whether the high birth rate is

the cause of the high infant mortality rate. It is sufficient to know that they are organically correlated along

with other antisocial factors detrimental to individual, national and racial welfare. The figures presented by

Hibbs [2] likewise reveal a much higher infant mortality rate for the later born children of large families.

The statistics which show that the greatest number of children are born to parents whose earnings are the

lowest,[3] that the direst poverty is associated with uncontrolled fecundity emphasize the character of the

A distinguished American opponent of Birth Control some years ago spoke of the ``racial'' value of this high

infant mortality rate among the ``unfit.'' He forgot, however, that the survivalrate of the children born of

these overworked and fatigued mothers may nevertheless be large enough, aided and abetted by

philanthropies and charities, to form the greater part of the population of tomorrow. As Dr. Karl Pearson has

stated: ``Degenerate stocks under present social conditions are not shortlived; they live to have more than

Reports of charitable organizations; the famous ``one hundred neediest cases'' presented every year by the

New York Times to arouse the sentimental generosity of its readers; statistics of public and private hospitals,

charities and corrections; analyses of pauperism in town and countryall tell the same tale of uncontrolled

and irresponsible fecundity. The facts, the figures, the appalling truth are there for all to read. It is only in the

remedy proposed, the effective solution, that investigators and students of the problem disagree.

Confronted with the ``startling and disgraceful'' conditions of affairs indicated by the fact that a quarter of a

million babies die every year in the United States before they are one year old, and that no less than 23,000

women die in childbirth, a large number of experts and enthusiasts have placed their hopes in

Such measures sharply illustrate the superficial and fragmentary manner in which the whole problem of

motherhood is studied today. It seeks a LAISSER FAIRE policy of parenthood or marriage, with an

indiscriminating paternalism concerning maternity. It is as though the Government were to say: ``Increase

and multiply; we shall assume the responsibility of keeping your babies alive.'' Even granting that the

administration of these measures might be made effective and effectual, which is more than doubtful, we see

that they are based upon a complete ignorance or disregard of the most important fact in the situationthat

of indiscriminate and irresponsible fecundity. They tacitly assume that all parenthood is desirable, that all

children should be born, and that infant mortality can be controlled by external aid. In the great

worldproblem of creating the men and women of tomorrow, it is not merely a question of sustaining the

lives of all children, irrespective of their hereditary and physical qualities, to the point where they, in turn,

may reproduce their kind. Advocates of Birth Control offer and accept no such superficial solution. This

philosophy is based upon a clearer vision and a more profound comprehension of human life. Of immediate

relief for the crushed and enslaved motherhood of the world through State aid, no better criticism has been

``To the theoretical philanthropist, eager to reform the world on paper, nothing seems simpler than to cure the

present evils of child rearing by setting up State nurseries which are at once to relieve mothers of everything

connected with the men of the future beyond the pleasureif such it happens to beof conceiving them,

and the trouble of bearing the, and at the same time to rear them up independently of the home, in a

wholesome, economical and scientific manner. Nothing seems simpler, but from the fundamental

psychological point of view nothing is falser. ...A State which admits that the individuals composing it are

incompetent to perform their most sacred and intimate functions, and takes it upon itself to perform them

itself instead, attempts a task that would be undesirable, even if it were possible of achievement.[4]'' It may

be replied that maternity benefit measures aim merely to aid mothers more adequately to fulfil their

biological and social functions. But from the point of view of Birth Control, that will never be possible until

the crushing exigencies of overcrowding are removedovercrowding of pregnancies as well as of homes. As

long as the mother remains the passive victim of blind instinct, instead of the conscious, responsible

instrument of the lifeforce, controlling and directing its expression, there can be no solution to the intricate

and complex problems that confront the whole world today. This is, of course, impossible as long as women

are driven into the factories, on night as well as day shifts, as long as children and girls and young women are

driven into industries to labor that is physically deteriorating as a preparation for the supreme function of

The philosophy of Birth Control insists that motherhood, no less than any other human function, must

undergo scientific study, must be voluntarily directed and controlled with intelligence and foresight. As long

as we countenance what H. G. Wells has well termed ``the monstrous absurdity of women discharging their

supreme social function, bearing and rearing children, in their spare time, as it were, while they `earn their

living' by contributing some half mechanical element to some trivial industrial product'' any attempt to

furnish ``maternal education'' is bound to fall on stony ground. Children brought into the world as the chance

consequences of the blind play of uncontrolled instinct, become likewise the helpless victims of their

environment. It is because children are cheaply conceived that the infant mortality rate is high. But the

greatest evil, perhaps the greatest crime, of our socalled civilization of to day, is not to be gauged by the

infantmortality rate. In truth, unfortunate babies who depart during their first twelve months are more

fortunate in many respects than those who survive to undergo punishment for their parents' cruel ignorance

and complacent fecundity. If motherhood is wasted under the present regime of ``glorious fertility,''

childhood is not merely wasted, but actually destroyed. Let us look at this matter from the point of view of

[1] U.S. Department of Labor: Children's Bureau. Infant Mortality Series, No. 3, pp. 81, 82, 83, 84. [2] Henry

H. Hibbs, Jr. Infant Mortality: Its Relation to Social and Industrial Conditions, p. 39. Russell Sage

Foundation, New York, 1916. [3] Cf. U. S. Department of Labor. Children's Bureau: Infant Mortality Series,

Failure of emotional, sentimental and socalled idealistic efforts, based on hysterical enthusiasm, to improve

social conditions, is nowhere better exemplified than in the undervaluation of childlife. A few years ago, the

scandal of children under fourteen working in cotton mills was exposed. There was muckraking and agitation.

A wave of moral indignation swept over America. There arose a loud cry for immediate action. Then, having

more or less successfully settled this particular matter, the American people heaved a sigh of relief, settled

back, and complacently congratulated itself that the problem of child labor had been settled once and for all.

Conditions are worse today than before. Not only is there child labor in practically every State in the Union,

but we are now forced to realize the evils that result from child labor, of child laborers now grown into

manhood and womanhood. But we wish here to point out a neglected aspect of this problem. Child labor

shows us how cheaply we value childhood. And moreover, it shows us that cheap childhood is the inevitable

result of chance parenthood. Child labor is organically bound up with the problem of uncontrolled breeding

The selective draft of 1917which was designed to choose for military service only those fulfiling definite

requirements of physical and mental fitnessshowed some of the results of child labor. It established the

fact that the majority of American children never got beyond the sixth grade, because they were forced to

leave school at that time. Our overadvertised compulsory education does not compel and does not educate.

The selectivedraft, it is our duty to emphasize this fact, revealed that 38 per cent. of the young men (more

than a million) were rejected because of physical illhealth and defects. And 25 per cent. were illiterate.

These young men were the children of yesterday. Authorities tell us that 75 per cent. of the schoolchildren

are defective. This means that no less than fifteen million schoolchildren, out of 22,000,000 in the United

This is the soil in which all sorts of serious evils strike root. It is a truism that children are the chief asset of a

nation. Yet while the United States government allotted 92.8 per cent. of its appropriations for 1920 toward

war expenses, three per cent. to public works, 3.2 per cent. to ``primary governmental functions,'' no more

than one per cent. is appropriated to education, research and development. Of this one per cent., only a small

proportion is devoted to public health. The conservation of childhood is a minor consideration. While three

cents is spent for the more or less doubtful protection of women and children, fifty cents is given to the

Bureau of Animal Industry, for the protection of domestic animals. In 1919, the State of Kansas appropriated

$25,000 to protect the health of pigs, and $4,000 to protect the health of children. In four years our Federal

Government appropriatedroughly speaking$81,000,000 for the improvement of rivers; $13,000,000 for

forest conservation; $8,000,000 for the experimental plant industry; $7,000,000 for the experimental animal

industry; $4,000,000 to combat the foot and mouth disease; and less than half a million for the protection of

Competent authorities tell us that no less than 75 per cent. of American children leave school between the

ages of fourteen and sixteen to go to work. This number is increasing. According to the recently published

report on ``The Administration of the First Child Labor Law,'' in five states in which it was necessary for the

Children's Bureau to handle directly the working certificates of children, onefifth of the 25,000 children

who applied for certificates left school when they were in the fourth grade; nearly a tenth of them had never

attended school at all or had not gone beyond the first grade; and only onetwentyfifth had gone as far as

the eighth grade. But their educational equipment was even more limited than the grade they attended would

indicate. Of the children applying to go to work 1,803 had not advanced further than the first grade even

when they had gone to school at all; 3,379 could not even sign their own names legibly, and nearly 2,000 of

them could not write at all. The report brings automatically into view the vicious circle of child labor,

illiteracy, bodily and mental defect, poverty and delinquency. And like all reports on child labor, the large

family and reckless breeding looms large in the background as one of the chief factors in the problem.

Despite all our boasting of the American public school, of the equal opportunity afforded to every child in

America, we have the shortest schoolterm, and the shortest schoolday of any of the civilized countries. In

the United States of America, there are 106 illiterates to every thousand people. In England there are 58 per

The United States is the most illiterate country in the worldthat is, of the socalled civilized countries. Of

the 5,000,000 illiterates in the United States, 58 per cent. are white and 28 per cent. native whites. Illiteracy

not only is the index of inequality of opportunity. It speaks as well a lack of consideration for the children. It

means either that children have been forced out of school to go to work, or that they are mentally and

One is tempted to ask why a society, which has failed so lamentably to protect the already existing child life

upon which its very perpetuation depends, takes upon itself the reckless encouragement of indiscriminate

procreation. The United States Government has recently inaugurated a policy of restricting immigration from

foreign countries. Until it is able to protect childhood from criminal exploitation, until it has made possible a

reasonable hope of life, liberty and growth for American children, it should likewise recognize the wisdom of

Reports on child labor published by the National Child Labor Committee only incidentally reveal the

correlation of this evil with that of large families. Yet this is evident throughout. The investigators are more

But it is no less a consequence of irresponsibility in breeding. A sinister aspect of this is revealed by Theresa

Wolfson's study of childlabor in the beetfields of Michigan.[2] As one weeder put it: ``Poor man make no

money, make plenty childrenplenty children good for sugarbeet business.'' Further illuminating details

``Why did they come to the beetfields? Most frequently families with large numbers of children said that

they felt that the city was no place to raise childrenthings too expensive and children ran wild in the

country all the children could work.'' Living conditions are abominable and unspeakably wretched. An old

woodshed, a longabandoned barn, and occasionally a tottering, ramshackle farmer's house are the common

types. ``One family of eleven, the youngest child two years, the oldest sixteen years, lived in an old country

store which had but one window; the wind and rain came through the holes in the walls, the ceiling was very

low and the smoke from the stove filled the room. Here the family ate, slept, cooked and washed.''

``In Tuscola County a family of six was found living in a oneroom shack with no windows. Light and

ventilation was secured through the open doors. Little Charles, eight years of age, was left at home to take

care of Dan, Annie and Pete, whose ages were five years, four years, and three months, respectively. In

addition, he cooked the noonday meal and brought it to his parents in the field. The filth and choking odors of

the shack made it almost unbearable, yet the baby was sleeping in a heap of rags piled up in a corner.''

Social philosophers of a certain school advocate the return to the landit is only in the overcrowded city,

they claim, that the evils resulting from the large family are possible. There is, according to this philosophy,

no overcrowding, no overpopulation in the country, where in the open air and sunlight every child has an

opportunity for health and growth. This idyllic conception of American country life does not correspond with

``To promote the physical and mental development of the child, we forbid his employment in factories, shops

and stores. On the other hand, we are prone to believe that the right kind of farmwork is healthful and the

best thing for children. But for a child to crawl along the ground, weeding beets in the hot sun for fourteen

hours a daythe average workdayis far from being the best thing. The law of compensation is bound to

work in some way, and the immediate result of this agricultural work is interference with school attendance.''

How closely related this form of childslavery is to the overlarge family, is definitely illustrated: ``In the

one hundred and thirty three families visited, there were six hundred children. A conversation held with a

``EightJulius, und Rose, und Martha, dey is mine; Gottlieb und Philip, und Frieda, dey is my

Families with ten and twelve children were frequently found, while those of six and eight children are the

general rule. The advantage of a large family in the beet fields is that it does the most work. In the one

hundred thirtythree families interviewed, there were one hundred eightysix children under the age of six

years, ranging from eight weeks up; thirtysix children between the ages of six and eight, approximately

twentyfive of whom had never been to school, and eleven over sixteen years of age who had never been to

school. One tenyear old boy had never been to school because he was a mental defective; one child of nine

was practically blinded by cataracts. This child was found groping his way down the beetrows pulling out

weeds and feeling for the beetplantsin the glare of the sun he had lost all sense of light and dark. Of the

three hundred and forty children who were not going or had never gone to school, only four had reached the

point of graduation, and only one had gone to high school. These large families migrated to the beetfields in

early spring. Seventy two per cent. of them are retarded. When we realize that feeble mindedness is

arrested development and retardation, we see that these ``beet children'' are artificially retarded in their

growth, and that the tendency is to reduce their intelligence to the level of the congenital imbecile.

Nor must it be concluded that these large ``beet'' families are always the ``ignorant foreigner'' so despised by

our respectable press. The following case throws some light on this matter, reported in the same pamphlet:

``An American family, considered a prize by the agent because of the fact that there were nine children,

turned out to be a `flunk.' They could not work in the beetfields, they ran up a bill at the countrystore, and

one day the father and the eldest son, a boy of nineteen, were seen running through the railroad station to

catch an outgoing train. The grocer thought they were `jumping' their bill. He telephoned ahead to the

sheriff of the next town. They were taken off the train by the sheriff and given the option of going back to the

farm or staying in jail. They preferred to stay in jail, and remained there for two weeks. Meanwhile, the

mother and her eight children, ranging in ages form seventeen years to nine months, had to manage the best

way they could. At the end of two weeks, father and son were set free....During all of this period the farmers

of the community sent in provisions to keep the wife and children from starving.'' Does this case not sum up

in a nutshell the typical American intelligence confronted with the problem of the toolarge

Let us turn to a young, possibly a more progressive state. Consider the case of ``California, the Golden'' as it

is named by Emma Duke, in her study of childlabor in the Imperial Valley, ``as fertile as the Valley of the

Nile.''[3] Here, cotton is king, and rich ranchers, absentee landlords and others exploit it. Less than ten years

ago ranchers would bring in hordes of laboring families, but refuse to assume any responsibility in housing

them, merely permitting them to sleep on the grounds of the ranch. Conditions have been somewhat

improved, but, sometimes, we read, ``a one roomed straw house with an area of fifteen by twenty feet will

serve as a home for an entire family, which not only cooks but sleeps in the same room.'' Here, as in

Michigan among the beets, children are ``thick as bees.'' All kinds of children pick, Miss Duke reports, ``even

those as young as three years! Fiveyearold children pick steadily all day.... Many white American children

are among thempure American stock, who have gradually moved from the Carolinas, Tennessee, and other

southern states to Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and on into the Imperial Valley.'' Some of these

children, it seems, wanted to attend school, but their fathers did not want to work; so the children were forced

to become breadwinners. One man whose children were working with him in the fields said, ``Please, lady,

don't send them to school; let them pick a while longer. I ain't got my new auto paid for yet.'' The native

white American mother of children working in the fields proudly remarked: ``No; they ain't never been to

school, nor me nor their poppy, nor their granddads and grandmoms. We've always been pickers!''and she

``In the Valley one hears from townspeople,'' writes the investigator, ``that pickers make ten dollars a day,

working the whole family. With that qualification, the statement is ambiguous. One Mexican in the Imperial

Valley was the father of thirtythree children`about thirteen or fourteen living,' he said. If they all worked

at cottonpicking, they would doubtless altogether make more than ten dollars a day.''

One of the child laborers revealed the economic advantageto the parentsin numerous progeny: ``Us kids

most always drag from forty to fifty pounds of cotton before we take it to be weighed. Three of us pick. I'm

twelve years old and my bag is twelve feet long. I can drag nearly a hundred pounds. My sister is ten years

old, and her bag is eight feet long. My little brother is seven and his bag is five feet long.''

Evidence abounds in the publications of the National Child Labor Committee of this type of fecund

parenthood.[4] It is not merely a question of the large family versus the small family. Even comparatively

small families among migratory workers of this sort have been large families. The high infant mortality rate

has carried off the weaker children. Those who survive are merely those who have been strong enough to

survive the most unfavorable living conditions. No; it is a situation not unique, nor even unusual in human

history, of greed and stupidity and cupidity encouraging the procreative instinct toward the manufacture of

slaves. We hear these days of the selfishness and the degradation of healthy and welleducated women who

refuse motherhood; but we hear little of the more sinister selfishness of men and women who bring babies

into the world to become child slaves of the kind described in these reports of child labor.

The history of child labor in the English factories in the nineteenth century throws a suggestive light on this

situation. These child workers were really called into being by the industrial situation. The population grew,

as Dean Inge has described it, like crops in a newly irrigated desert. During the nineteenth century, the

numbers were nearly quadrupled. ``Let those who think that the population of a country can be increased at

will, consider whether it is likely that any physical, moral, or psychological change came over the nation co

incidentally with the inventions of the spinning jenny and the steam engine. It is too obvious for dispute that

it was the possession of capital wanting employment, and of natural advantages for using it, that called those

multitudes of human beings into existence, to eat the food which they paid for by their labor.''[5]

But when child labor in the factories became such a scandal and such a disgrace that childlabor was finally

forbidden by laws that possessed the advantage over our own that they were enforced, the proletariat ceased

to supply children. Almost by magic the birth rate among the workers declined. Since children were no longer

of economic value to the factories, they were evidently a drug in the home. This movement, it should not be

forgotten however, was coincident with the agitation and education in Birth Control stimulated by the

Large families among migratory agricultural laborers in our own country are likewise brought into existence

in response to an industrial demand. The enforcement of the child labor laws and the extension of their

restrictions are therefore an urgent necessity, not so much, as some of our childlabor authorities believe, to

enable these children to go to school, as to prevent the recruiting of our next generation from the least

intelligent and most unskilled classes in the community. As long as we officially encourage and countenance

the production of large families, the evils of child labor will confront us. On the other hand, the prohibition of

child labor may help, as in the case of English factories, in the decline of the birth rate.

confronted with the evils of the latter, in the form of widespread illiteracy and defect, we should seek causes

more deeply rooted than the enslavement of children. The cost to society is incalculable, as the National

Child Labor Committee points out. ``It is not only through the lowered power, the stunting and the moral

degeneration of its individual members, but in actual expense, through the necessary provision for the human

junk, created by premature employment, in poorhouses, hospitals, police and courts, jails and by charitable

Today we are paying for the folly of the overproductionand its consequences in permanent injury to

plastic childhoodof yesterday. Tomorrow, we shall be forced to pay for our ruthless disregard of our

surplus children of today. the childlaborer of one or two decades ago has become the shifting laborer of

today, stunted, underfed, illiterate, unskilled, unorganized and unorganizable. ``He is the last person to be

hired and the first to be fired.'' Boys and girls under fourteen years of age are no longer permitted to work in

factories, mills, canneries and establishments whose products are to be shipped out of the particular state, and

children under sixteen can no longer work in mines and quarries. But this affects only one quarter of our

army of child laborwork in local industries, stores, and farms, homework in dark and unsanitary tenements

is still permitted. Children work in ``homes'' on artificial flowers, finishing shoddy garments, sewing their

very life's blood and that of the race into tawdry clothes and gewgaws that are the most unanswerable

comments upon our vaunted ``civilization.'' And today, we must not forget, the childlaborer of yesterday is

``Any nation that works its women is damned,'' once wrote Woods Hutchinson. The nation that works its

children, one is tempted to add, is committing suicide. Loudmouthed defenders of American democracy pay

no attention to the strange fact that, although ``the average education among all American adults is only the

sixth grade,'' every one of these adults has an equal power at the polls. The American nation, with all its

worship of efficiency and thrift, complacently forgets that ``every child defective in body, education or

character is a charge upon the community,'' as Herbert Hoover declared in an address before the American

Child Hygiene Association (October, 1920): ``The nation as a whole,'' he added, ``has the obligation of such

measures toward its children...as will yield to them an equal opportunity at their start in life. If we could

grapple with the whole child situation for one generation, our public health, our economic efficiency, the

moral character, sanity and stability of our people would advance three generations in one.''

The great irrefutable fact that is ignored or neglected is that the American nation officially places a low value

upon the lives of its children. The brutal truth is that CHILDREN ARE CHEAP. When over production in

this field is curtailed by voluntary restriction, when the birth rate among the working classes takes a sharp

decline, the value of children will rise. Then only will the infant mortality rate decline, and child labor vanish.

Investigations of child labor emphasize its evils by pointing out that these children are kept out of school, and

that they miss the advantages of American public school education. They express the current confidence in

compulsory education and the magical benefits to be derived from the public school. But we need to qualify

our faith in education, and particularly our faith in the American public school. Educators are just beginning

to wake up to the dangers inherent in the attempt to teach the brightest child and the mentally defective child

at the same time. They are beginning to test the possibilities of a ``vertical'' classification as well as a

``horizontal'' one. That is, each class must be divided into what are termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull,

Normal, and Defective. In the past the helterskelter crowding and overcrowding together of all classes of

children of approximately the same age, produced only a dull leveling to mediocrity.[6]

An investigation of forty schools in New York City, typical of hundreds of others, reveals deplorable

conditions of overcrowding and lack of sanitation.[7] The worst conditions are to be found in locations the

most densely populated. Thus of Public School No. 51, located almost in the center of the notorious ``Hell's

Kitchen'' section, we read: ``The play space which is provided is a mockery of the worst kind. The basement

playroom is dark, damp, poorly lighted, poorly ventilated, foul smelling, unclean, and wholly unfit for

children for purposes of play. The drainpipes from the roof have decayed to such a degree that in some

instances as little as a quarter of the pipe remains. On rainy days, water enters the classrooms, hallways,

corridors, and is thrown against windows because the pipes have rotted away. The narrow stairways and halls

are similar to those of jails and dungeons of a century ago. The classrooms are poorly lighted, inadequately

equipped, and in some cases so small that the desks of pupils and teachers occupy almost all of the

Another school, located a short distance from Fifth Avenue, the ``wealthiest street in the world,'' is described

as an ``old shell of a structure, erected decades ago as a modern school building. Nearly two thousand

children are crowded into classrooms having a total seating capacity of scarcely one thousand. Narrow

doorways, intricate hallways and antiquated stairways, dark and precipitous, keep ever alive the danger of

disaster from fire or panic. Only the eternal vigilance of exceptional supervision has served to lessen the fear

of such a catastrophe. Artificial light is necessary, even on the brightest days, in many of the classrooms. In

most of the classrooms, it is always necessary when the sky is slightly overcast.'' There is no ventilating

In the crowded East Side section conditions are reported to be no better. The Public Education Association's

report on Public School No. 130 points out that the site at the corner of Hester and Baxter Streets was

purchased by the city years ago as a school site, but that there has been so much ``tweedledeeing and

tweedleduming'' that the new building which is to replace the old, has not even yet been planned! Meanwhile,

year after year, thousands of children are compelled to study daily in dark and dingy classrooms. ``Artificial

light is continually necessary,'' declares the report. ``The ventilation is extremely poor. The fire hazard is

naturally great. There are no restrooms whatever for the teachers.'' Other schools in the neighborhood reveal

conditions even worse. In two of them, for example; ``In accordance with the requirements of the syllabus in

hygiene in the schools, the vision of the children is regularly tested. In a recent test of this character, it was

found in Public School 108, the rate of defective vision in the various grades ranged from 50 to 64 per cent.!

The conditions, we are assured, are no exceptions to the rule of public schools in New York, where the fatal

effects of overcrowding in education may be observed in their most sinister but significant aspects.

The forgotten fact in this case is that efforts for universal and compulsory education cannot keep pace with

the overproduction of children. Even at the best, leaving out of consideration the public school system as the

inevitable prey and plunderingground of the cheap politician and jobhunter, present methods of wholesale

and syndicated ``education'' are not suited to compete with the unceasing, unthinking, untiring procreative

Into such schools as described in the recent reports of the Public Education Association, no intelligent parent

would dare send his child. They are not merely firetraps and culturegrounds of infection, but of moral and

intellectual contamination as well. More and more are public schools in America becoming institutions for

subjecting children to a narrow and reactionary orthodoxy, aiming to crush out all signs of individuality, and

to turn out boys and girls compressed into a standardized pattern, with readymade ideas on politics, religion,

morality, and economics. True education cannot grow out of such compulsory herding of children in filthy

Character, ability, and reasoning power are not to be developed in this fashion. Indeed, it is to be doubted

whether even a completely successful educational system could offset the evils of indiscriminate breeding

and compensate for the misfortune of being a superfluous child. In recognizing the great need of education,

we have failed to recognize the greater need of inborn health and character. ``If it were necessary to choose

between the task of getting children educated and getting them well born and healthy,'' writes Havelock Ellis,

``it would be better to abandon education. There have been many great peoples who never dreamed of

national systems of education; there have been no great peoples without the art of producing healthy and

vigorous children. The matter becomes of peculiar importance in great industrial states, like England, the

United States and Germany, because in such states, a tacit conspiracy tends to grow up to subordinate

national ends to individual ends, and practically to work for the deterioration of the race.''[8]

Much less can education solve the great problem of child labor. Rather, under the conditions prevailing in

modern society, child labor and the failure of the public schools to educate are both indices of a more deeply

rooted evil. Both bespeak THE UNDERVALUATION OF THE CHILD. This undervaluation, this

cheapening of child life, is to speak crudely but frankly the direct result of overproduction. ``Restriction of

output'' is an immediate necessity if we wish to regain control of the real values, so that unimpeded,

unhindered, and without danger of inner corruption, humanity may protect its own health and powers.

[1] I am indebted to the National Child Labor Committee for these statistics, as well as for many of the facts

that follow. [2] ``People Who Go to Beets'' Pamphlet No. 299, National Child Labor Committee. [3]

California the Golden, by Emma Duke. Reprinted from The American Child, Vol. II, No. 3. November 1920.

[4] Cf. Child Welfare in Oklahoma; Child Welfare in Alabama; Child Welfare in North Carolina; Child

Welfare in Kentucky; Child Welfare in Tennessee. Also, Children in Agriculture, by Ruth McIntire, and other

studies. [5] W. R. Inge: Outspoken Essays: p. 92 [6] Cf. Tredgold: Inheritance and Educability. Eugenics

Review, Vol. Xiii, No. I, pp. 839 et seq. [7] Cf. New York Times, June 4, 1921. [8] ``Studies in the

There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feebleminded. That is,

as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their

descendants. Feeblemindedness as investigations and statistics from every country indicate, is invariably

associated with an abnormally high rate of fertility. Modern conditions of civilization, as we are continually

being reminded, furnish the most favorable breedingground for the mental defective, the moron, the

imbecile. ``We protect the members of a weak strain,'' says Davenport, ``up to the period of reproduction, and

then let them free upon the community, and encourage them to leave a large progeny of `feebleminded':

which in turn, protected from mortality and carefully nurtured up to the reproductive period, are again set free

to reproduce, and so the stupid work goes on of preserving and increasing our socially unfit strains.''

The philosophy of Birth Control points out that as long as civilized communities encourage unrestrained

fecundity in the ``normal'' members of the populationalways of course under the cloak of decency and

moralityand penalize every attempt to introduce the principle of discrimination and responsibility in

parenthood, they will be faced with the everincreasing problem of feeblemindedness, that fertile parent of

degeneracy, crime, and pauperism. Small as the percentage of the imbecile and halfwitted may seem in

comparison with the normal members of the community, it should always be remembered that feeble

mindedness is not an unrelated expression of modern civilization. Its roots strike deep into the social fabric.

Modern studies indicate that insanity, epilepsy, criminality, prostitution, pauperism, and mental defect, are all

organically bound up together and that the least intelligent and the thoroughly degenerate classes in every

community are the most prolific. Feeblemindedness in one generation becomes pauperism or insanity in the

next. There is every indication that feeblemindedness in its protean forms is on the increase, that it has

leaped the barriers, and that there is truly, as some of the scientific eugenists have pointed out, a

feebleminded peril to future generationsunless the feebleminded are prevented from reproducing their

kind. To meet this emergency is the immediate and peremptory duty of every State and of all communities.

The curious situation has come about that while our statesmen are busy upon their propaganda of

``repopulation,'' and are encouraging the production of large families, they are ignoring the exigent problem

of the elimination of the feebleminded. In this, however, the politicians are at one with the traditions of a

civilization which, with its charities and philanthropies, has propped up the defective and degenerate and

relieved them of the burdens borne by the healthy sections of the community, thus enabling them more easily

and more numerously to propagate their kind. ``With the very highest motives,'' declares Dr. Walter E.

Fernald, ``modern philanthropic efforts often tend to foster and increase the growth of defect in the

community....The only feebleminded persons who now receive any official consideration are those who

have already become dependent or delinquent, many of whom have already become parents. We lock the

barndoor after the horse is stolen. We now have state commissions for controlling the gipsymoth and the

boll weevil, the footandmouth disease, and for protecting the shellfish and wild game, but we have no

commission which even attempts to modify or to control the vast moral and economic forces represented by

How the feebleminded and their always numerous progeny run the gamut of police, almshouses, courts,

penal institutions, ``charities and corrections,'' tramp shelters, lyingin hospitals, and relief afforded by

privately endowed religious and social agencies, is shown in any number of reports and studies of family

histories. We find cases of feeblemindedness and mental defect in the reports on infant mortality referred to

in a previous chapter, as well as in other reports published by the United States government. Here is a typical

case showing the astonishing ability to ``increase and multiply,'' organically bound up with delinquency and

``The parents of a feebleminded girl, twenty years of age, who was committed to the Kansas State Industrial

Farm on a vagrancy charge, lived in a thickly populated Negro district which was reported by the police to be

the headquarters for the criminal element of the surrounding State....The mother married at fourteen, and her

first child was born at fifteen. In rapid succession she gave birth to sixteen liveborn children and had one

miscarriage. The first child, a girl, married but separated from her husband....The fourth, fifth and sixth, all

girls, died in infancy or early childhood. The seventh, a girl, remarried after the death of her husband, from

whom she had been separated. The eighth, a boy who early in life began to exhibit criminal tendencies, was

in prison for highway robbery and burglary. The ninth, a girl, normal mentally, was in quarantine at the

Kansas State Industrial Farm at the time this study was made; she had lived with a man as his commonlaw

wife, and had also been arrested several times for soliciting. The tenth, a boy, was involved in several

delinquencies when young and was sent to the detentionhouse but did not remain there long. The eleventh, a

boy...at the age of seventeen was sentenced to the penitentiary for twenty years on a charge of firstdegree

robbery; after serving a portion of his time, he was paroled, and later was shot and killed in a fight. The

twelfth, a boy, was at fifteen years of age implicated in a murder and sent to the industrial school, but escaped

from there on a bicycle which he had stolen; at eighteen, he was shot and killed by a woman. The thirteenth

child, feebleminded, is the girl of the study. The fourteenth, a boy was considered by police to be the best

member of the family; his mother reported him to be much slower mentally than his sister just mentioned; he

had been arrested several times. Once, he was held in the detentionhome and once sent to the State

Industrial school; at other times, he was placed on probation. The fifteenth, a girl sixteen years old, has for a

long time had a bad reputation. Subsequent to the commitment of her sister to the Kansas State Industrial

Farm, she was arrested on a charge of vagrancy, found to by syphilitic, and quarantined in a state other than

Kansas. At the time of her arrest, she stated that prostitution was her occupation. The last child was a boy of

The notorious fecundity of feebleminded women is emphasized in studies and investigations of the problem,

coming from all countries. ``The feebleminded woman is twice as prolific as the normal one.'' Sir James

CrichtonBrowne speaks of the great numbers of feebleminded girls, wholly unfit to become mothers, who

return to the workhouse year after year to bear children, ``many of whom happily die, but some of whom

survive to recruit our idiot establishments and to repeat their mothers' performances.'' Tredgold points out that

the number of children born to the feebleminded is abnormally high. Feebleminded women ``constitute a

permanent menace to the race and one which becomes serious at a time when the decline of the birthrate

is...unmistakable.'' Dr. Tredgold points out that ``the average number of children born in a family is four,

whereas in these degenerate families, we find an average of 7.3 to each. Out of this total only a little more

than ONETHIRD456 out of a total of 1,269 childrencan be considered profitable members of the

Another significant point is the number of mentally defective children who survive. ``Out of the total number

of 526 mentally affected persons in the 150 families, there are 245 in the present generation an unusually

Speaking for Bradford, England, Dr. Helen U. Campbell touches another significant and interesting point

usually neglected by the advocates of mothers' pensions, milkstations, and maternityeducation programs.

``We are also confronted with the problem of the actually mentally deficient, of the more or less

feebleminded, and the deranged, epileptic...or otherwise mentally abnormal mother,'' writes this authority.

``The `bad mothering' of these cases is quite unimprovable at an infant welfare center, and a very definite if

not relatively very large percentage of our infants are suffering severely as a result of dependence upon such

Thus we are brought face to face with another problem of infant mortality. Are we to check the infant

mortality rate among the feebleminded and aid the unfortunate offspring to grow up, a menace to the

civilized community even when not actually certifiable as mentally defective or not obviously imbecile?

Other figures and studies indicate the close relationship between feeblemindedness and the spread of

venereal scourges. We are informed that in Michigan, 75 per cent. of the prostitute class is infected with some

form of venereal disease, and that 75 per cent. of the infected are mentally defective,morons, imbeciles, or

``border line'' cases most dangerous to the community at large. At least 25 per cent. of the inmates of our

prisons, according to Dr. Fernald, are mentally defective and belong either to the feebleminded or to the

defectivedelinquent class. Nearly 50 per cent. of the girls sent to reformatories are mental defectives.

Today, society treats feeble minded or ``defective delinquent'' men or women as ``criminals,'' sentences

them to prison or reformatory for a ``term,'' and then releases them at the expiration of their sentences. They

are usually at liberty just long enough to reproduce their kind, and then they return again and again to prison.

The truth of this statement is evident from the extremely large proportion in institutions of neglected and

dependent children, who are the feebleminded offspring of such feebleminded parents.

Confronted with these shocking truths about the menace of feeble mindedness to the race, a menace acute

because of the unceasing and unrestrained fertility of such defectives, we are apt to become the victims of a

``wild panic for instant action.'' There is no occasion for hysterical, illconsidered action, specialists tell us.

They direct our attention to another phase of the problem, that of the so called ``good feebleminded.'' We

are informed that imbecility, in itself, is not synonymous with badness. If it is fostered in a ``suitable

environment,'' it may express itself in terms of good citizenship and useful occupation. It may thus be

transmuted into a docile, tractable, and peaceable element of the community. The moron and the

feebleminded, thus protected, so we are assured, may even marry some brighter member of the community,

and thus lessen the chances of procreating another generation of imbeciles. We read further that some of our

doctors believe that ``in our social scale, there is a place for the good feebleminded.''

In such a reckless and thoughtless differentiation between the ``bad'' and the ``good'' feebleminded, we find

new evidence of the conventional middleclass bias that also finds expression among some of the eugenists.

We do not object to feeblemindedness simply because it leads to immorality and criminality; nor can we

approve of it when it expresses itself in docility, submissiveness and obedience. We object because both are

burdens and dangers to the intelligence of the community. As a matter of fact, there is sufficient evidence to

lead us to believe that the socalled ``borderline cases'' are a greater menace than the outandout ``defective

delinquents'' who can be supervised, controlled and prevented from procreating their kind. The advent of the

BinetSimon and similar psychological tests indicates that the mental defective who is glib and plausible,

bright looking and attractive, but with a mental vision of seven, eight or nine years, may not merely lower the

whole level of intelligence in a school or in a society, but may be encouraged by church and state to increase

and multiply until he dominates and gives the prevailing ``color''culturally speakingto an entire

The presence in the public schools of the mentally defective children of men and women who should never

have been parents is a problem that is becoming more and more difficult, and is one of the chief reasons for

lower educational standards. As one of the greatest living authorities on the subject, Dr. A. Tredgold, has

pointed out,[4] this has created a destructive conflict of purpose. ``In the case of children with a low

intellectual capacity, much of the education at present provided is for all practical purposes a complete waste

of time, money and patience....On the other hand, for children of high intellectual capacity, our present

system does not go far enough. I believe that much innate potentiality remains undeveloped, even amongst

the working classes, owing to the absence of opportunity for higher education, to the disadvantage of the

nation. In consequence of these fundamental differences, the catchword `equality of opportunity' is

meaningless and mere claptrap in the absence of any equality to respond to such opportunity. What is wanted

is not equality of opportunity, but education adapted to individual potentiality; and if the time and money

now spent in the fruitless attempt to make silkpurses out of sows' ears, were devoted to the higher education

of children of good natural capacity, it would contribute enormously to national efficiency.''

In a much more complex manner than has been recognized even by students of this problem, the destiny and

the progress of civilization and of human expression has been hindered and held back by this burden of the

imbecile and the moron. While we may admire the patience and the deep human sympathy with which the

great specialists in feeble mindedness have expressed the hope of drying up the sources of this evil or of

rendering it harmless, we should not permit sympathy or sentimentality to blind us to the fact that health and

vitality and human growth likewise need cultivation. ``A LAISSER FAIRE policy,'' writes one investigator,

``simply allows the social sore to spread. And a quasi LAISSER FAIRE policy wherein we allow the

defective to commit crime and then interfere and imprison him, wherein we grant the defective the personal

liberty to do as he pleases, until he pleases to descend to a plane of living below the animal level, and try to

care for a few of his descendants who are so helpless that they can no longer exercise that personal liberty to

do as they please,''such a policy increases and multiplies the dangers of the overfertile feebleminded.[5]

The Mental Survey of the State of Oregon recently published by the United States Health Service, sets an

excellent example and should be followed by every state in the Union and every civilized country as well. It

is greatly to the credit of the Western State that it is one of the first officially to recognize the primary

importance of this problem and to realize that facts, no matter how fatal to self satisfaction, must be faced.

This survey, authorized by the state legislature, and carried out by the University of Oregon, in collaboration

with Dr. C. L. Carlisle of the Public Health service, aided by a large number of volunteers, shows that only a

small percentage of mental defectives and morons are in the care of institutions. The rest are widely scattered

and their condition unknown or neglected. They are docile and submissive. they do not attract attention to

themselves as do the criminal delinquents and the insane. Nevertheless, it is estimated that they number no

less than 75,000 men, women, and children, out of a total population of 783,000, or about ten per cent.

Oregon, it is thought, is no exception to other states. Yet under our present conditions, these people are

Concerning the importance of the Oregon survey, we may quote Surgeon General H. C. Cumming: ``the

prevention and correction of mental defectives is one of the great public health problems of today. It enters

into many phases of our work and its influence continually crops up unexpectedly. For instance, work of the

Public Health Service in connection with juvenile courts shows that a marked proportion of juvenile

delinquency is traceable to some degree of mental deficiency in the offender. For years Public Health

officials have concerned themselves only with the disorders of physical health; but now they are realizing the

significance of mental health also. The work in Oregon constitutes the first statewide survey which even

begins to disclose the enormous drain on a state, caused by mental defects. One of the objects of the work

was to obtain for the people of Oregon an idea of the problem that confronted them and the heavy annual

loss, both economic and industrial, that it entailed. Another was to enable the legislators to devise a program

that would stop much of the loss, restore to health and bring to lives of industrial usefulness, many of those

now down and out, and above all, to save hundreds of children from growing up to lives of misery.''

It will be interesting to see how many of our State Legislatures have the intelligence and the courage to

follow in the footsteps of Oregon in this respect. Nothing could more effectually stimulate discussion, and

awaken intelligence as to the extravagance and cost to the community of our present codes of traditional

morality. But we should make sure in all such surveys, that mental defect is not concealed even in such

dignified bodies as state legislatures and among those leaders who are urging men and women to reckless and

I have touched upon these various aspects of the complex problem of the feebleminded, and the menace of

the moron to human society, not merely for the purpose of reiterating that it is one of the greatest and most

difficult social problems of modern times, demanding an immediate, stern and definite policy, but because it

illustrates the actual harvest of reliance upon traditional morality, upon the biblical injunction to increase and

multiply, a policy still taught by politician, priest and militarist. Motherhood has been held universally

sacred; yet, as Bouchacourt pointed out, ``today, the dregs of the human species, the blind, the deafmute,

the degenerate, the nervous, the vicious, the idiotic, the imbecile, the cretins and the epilepticsare better

protected than pregnant women.'' The syphilitic, the irresponsible, the feebleminded are encouraged to breed

unhindered, while all the powerful forces of tradition, of custom, or prejudice, have bolstered up the

desperate effort to block the inevitable influence of true civilization in spreading the principles of

independence, selfreliance, discrimination and foresight upon which the great practice of intelligent

Today we are confronted by the results of this official policy. There is no escaping it; there is no explaining

it away. Surely it is an amazing and discouraging phenomenon that the very governments that have seen fit to

interfere in practically every phase of the normal citizen's life, dare not attempt to restrain, either by force or

persuasion, the moron and the imbecile from producing his large family of feebleminded offspring.

In my own experience, I recall vividly the case of a feebleminded girl who every year, for a long period,

received the expert attention of a great specialist in one of the bestknown maternity hospitals of New York

City. The great obstetrician, for the benefit of interns and medical students, performed each year a Caesarian

operation upon this unfortunate creature to bring into the world her defective, and, in one case at least, her

syphilitic, infant. ``Nelly'' was then sent to a special room and placed under the care of a day nurse and a

night nurse, with extra and special nourishment provided. Each year she returned to the hospital. Such cases

are not exceptions; any experienced doctor or nurse can recount similar stories. In the interest of medical

science this practice may be justified. I am not criticising it from that point of view. I realize as well as the

most conservative moralist that humanity requires that healthy members of the race should make certain

sacrifices to preserve from death those unfortunates who are born with hereditary taints. But there is a point at

which philanthropy may become positively dysgenic, when charity is converted into injustice to the

selfsupporting citizen, into positive injury to the future of the race. Such a point, it seems obvious, is

reached when the incurably defective are permitted to procreate and thus increase their numbers.

The problem of the dependent, delinquent and defective elements in modern society, we must repeat, cannot

be minimized because of their alleged small numerical proportion to the rest of the population. The

proportion seems small only because we accustom ourselves to the habit of looking upon feeblemindedness

as a separate and distinct calamity to the race, as a chance phenomenon unrelated to the sexual and biological

customs not only condoned but even encouraged by our so called civilization. The actual dangers can only

be fully realized when we have acquired definite information concerning the financial and cultural cost of

these classes to the community, when we become fully cognizant of the burden of the imbecile upon the

whole human race; when we see the funds that should be available for human development, for scientific,

artistic and philosophic research, being diverted annually, by hundreds of millions of dollars, to the care and

segregation of men, women, and children who never should have been born. The advocate of Birth Control

realizes as well as all intelligent thinkers the dangers of interfering with personal liberty. Our whole

philosophy is, in fact, based upon the fundamental assumption that man is a selfconscious, selfgoverning

creature, that he should not be treated as a domestic animal; that he must be left free, at least within certain

wide limits, to follow his own wishes in the matter of mating and in the procreation of children. Nor do we

believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from

But modern society, which has respected the personal liberty of the individual only in regard to the

unrestricted and irresponsible bringing into the world of filth and poverty an overcrowding procession of

infants foredoomed to death or hereditable disease, is now confronted with the problem of protecting itself

and its future generations against the inevitable consequences of this longpractised policy of

The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feebleminded

girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the

reproductive period. Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn are just as certain

to breed other defectives. The male defectives are no less dangerous. Segregation carried out for one or two

generations would give us only partial control of the problem. Moreover, when we realize that each feeble

minded person is a potential source of an endless progeny of defect, we prefer the policy of immediate

sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feebleminded.

This, I say, is an emergency measure. But how are we to prevent the repetition in the future of a new harvest

of imbecility, the recurrence of new generations of morons and defectives, as the logical and inevitable

consequence of the universal application of the traditional and widely approved command to increase and

At the present moment, we are offered three distinct and more or less mutually exclusive policies by which

civilization may hope to protect itself and the generations of the future from the allied dangers of imbecility,

defect and delinquency. No one can understand the necessity for Birth control education without a complete

comprehension of the dangers, the inadequacies, or the limitations of the present attempts at control, or the

proposed programs for social reconstruction and racial regeneration. It is, therefore, necessary to interpret and

criticize the three programs offered to meet our emergency. These may be briefly summarized as follows:

(1) Philanthropy and Charity: This is the present and traditional method of meeting the problems of human

defect and dependence, of poverty and delinquency. It is emotional, altruistic, at best ameliorative, aiming to

meet the individual situation as it arises and presents itself. Its effect in practise is seldom, if ever, truly

preventive. Concerned with symptoms, with the allaying of acute and catastrophic miseries, it cannot, if it

would, strike at the radical causes of social misery. At its worst, it is sentimental and paternalistic.

(2) Marxian Socialism: This may be considered typical of many widely varying schemes of more or less

revolutionary social reconstruction, emphasizing the primary importance of environment, education, equal

opportunity, and health, in the elimination of the conditions (i. e. capitalistic control of industry) which have

resulted in biological chaos and human waste. I shall attempt to show that the Marxian doctrine is both too

limited, too superficial and too fragmentary in its basic analysis of human nature and in its program of

(3) Eugenics: Eugenics seems to me to be valuable in its critical and diagnostic aspects, in emphasizing the

danger of irresponsible and uncontrolled fertility of the ``unfit'' and the feebleminded establishing a

progressive unbalance in human society and lowering the birthrate among the ``fit.'' But in its socalled

``constructive'' aspect, in seeking to reestablish the dominance of healthy strain over the unhealthy, by urging

an increased birthrate among the fit, the Eugenists really offer nothing more farsighted than a ``cradle

competition'' between the fit and the unfit. They suggest in very truth, that all intelligent and respectable

parents should take as their example in this grave matter of childbearing the most irresponsible elements in

[1] United States Public Health Service: Psychiatric Studies of Delinquents. Reprint No. 598: pp. 6465. [2]

The Problem of the FeebleMinded: An Abstract of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Cure and

Control of the FeebleMinded, London: P. S. King Son. [3] Cf. FeebleMinded in Ontario: Fourteenth

Report for the year ending October 31st, 1919. [4] Eugenics Review, Vol. XIII, p. 339 et seq. [5] Dwellers in

the Vale of Siddem: A True Sto ry of the Social Aspect of Feeblemindedness. By A. C. Rogers and Maud

The last century has witnessed the rise and development of philanthropy and organized charity. Coincident

with the all conquering power of machinery and capitalistic control, with the unprecedented growth of great

cities and industrial centers, and the creation of great proletarian populations, modern civilization has been

confronted, to a degree hitherto unknown in human history, with the complex problem of sustaining human

The program, as I believe all competent authorities in contemporary philanthropy and organized charity

would agree, has been altered in aim and purpose. It was first the outgrowth of humanitarian and altruistic

idealism, perhaps not devoid of a strain of sentimentalism, of an idealism that was aroused by a desperate

picture of human misery intensified by the industrial revolution. It has developed in later years into a program

not so much aiming to succor the unfortunate victims of circumstances, as to effect what we may term social

sanitation. Primarily, it is a program of selfprotection. Contemporary philanthropy, I believe, recognizes that

extreme poverty and overcrowded slums are veritable breedinggrounds of epidemics, disease, delinquency

and dependency. Its aim, therefore, is to prevent the individual family from sinking to that abject condition in

There is no need here to criticize the obvious limitations of organized charities in meeting the desperate

problem of destitution. We are all familiar with these criticisms: the common indictment of ``inefficiency'' so

often brought against public and privately endowed agencies. The charges include the high cost of

administration; the pauperization of deserving poor, and the encouragement and fostering of the

``undeserving''; the progressive destruction of selfrespect and selfreliance by the paternalistic interference

of social agencies; the impossibility of keeping pace with the everincreasing multiplication of factors and

influences responsible for the perpetuation of human misery; the misdirection and misappropriation of

endowments; the absence of interorganization and coordination of the various agencies of church, state, and

privately endowed institutions; the ``crimes of charity'' that are occasionally exposed in newspaper scandals.

These and similar strictures we may ignore as irrelevant to our present purpose, as inevitable but not

incurable faults that have been and are being eliminated in the slow but certain growth of a beneficent power

in modern civilization. In reply to such criticisms, the protagonist of modern philanthropy might justly point

to the honest and sincere workers and disinterested scientists it has mobilized, to the selfsacrificing and

hardworking executives who have awakened public attention to the evils of poverty and the menace to the

Even if we accept organized charity at its own valuation, and grant that it does the best it can, it is exposed to

a more profound criticism. It reveals a fundamental and irremediable defect. Its very success, its very

efficiency, its very necessity to the social order, are themselves the most unanswerable indictment. Organized

Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and

destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our

civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents

and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the ``failure'' of philanthropy, but rather at its

These dangers inherent in the very idea of humanitarianism and altruism, dangers which have today

produced their full harvest of human waste, of inequality and inefficiency, were fully recognized in the last

century at the moment when such ideas were first put into practice. Readers of Huxley's attack on the

Salvation Army will recall his penetrating and stimulating condemnation of the debauch of sentimentalism

which expressed itself in so uncontrolled a fashion in the Victorian era. One of the most penetrating of

American thinkers, Henry James, Sr., sixty or seventy years ago wrote: ``I have been so long accustomed to

see the most arrant deviltry transact itself in the name of benevolence, that the moment I hear a profession of

good will from almost any quarter, I instinctively look around for a constable or place my hand within reach

of a bellrope. My ideal of human intercourse would be a state of things in which no man will ever stand in

need of any other man's help, but will derive all his satisfaction from the great social tides which own no

individual names. I am sure no man can be put in a position of dependence upon another, without the other's

very soon becomingif he accepts the duties of the relationutterly degraded out of his just human

proportions. No man can play the Deity to his fellow man with impunityI mean, spiritual impunity, of

course. For see: if I am at all satisfied with that relation, if it contents me to be in a position of generosity

towards others, I must be remarkably indifferent at bottom to the gross social inequality which permits that

position, and, instead of resenting the enforced humiliation of my fellow man to myself in the interests of

humanity, I acquiesce in it for the sake of the profit it yields to my own selfcomplacency. I do hope the

reign of benevolence is over; until that event occurs, I am sure the reign of God will be impossible.''

Today, we may measure the evil effects of ``benevolence'' of this type, not merely upon those who have

indulged in it, but upon the community at large. These effects have been reduced to statistics and we cannot,

if we would, escape their significance. Look, for instance (since they are close at hand, and fairly

representative of conditions elsewhere) at the total annual expenditures of public and private ``charities and

corrections'' for the State of New York. For the year ending June 30, 1919, the expenditures of public

institutions and agencies amounted to $33, 936,205.88. The expenditures of privately supported and endowed

institutions for the same year, amount to $58,100,530.98. This makes a total, for public and private charities

and corrections of $92,036,736.86. A conservative estimate of the increase for the year (19201921) brings

this figure approximately to onehundred and twentyfive millions. These figures take on an eloquent

significance if we compare them to the comparatively small amounts spent upon education, conservation of

health and other constructive efforts. Thus, while the City of New York spent $7.35 per capita on public

education in the year 1918, it spent on public charities no less than $2.66. Add to this last figure an even

larger amount dispensed by private agencies, and we may derive some definite sense of the heavy burden of

dependency, pauperism and delinquency upon the normal and healthy sections of the community.

Statistics now available also inform us that more than a million dollars are spent annually to support the

public and private institutions in the state of New York for the segregation of the feebleminded and the

epileptic. A million and a half is spent for the upkeep of state prisons, those homes of the ``defective

delinquent.'' Insanity, which, we should remember, is to a great extent hereditary, annually drains from the

state treasury no less than $11,985,695.55, and from private sources and endowments another twenty

millions. When we learn further that the total number of inmates in public and private institutions in the State

of New York in almshouses, reformatories, schools for the blind, deaf and mute, in insane asylums, in

homes for the feebleminded and epileptic amounts practically to less than sixtyfive thousand, an

insignificant number compared to the total population, our eyes should be opened to the terrific cost to the

The United States Public Health Survey of the State of Oregon, recently published, shows that even a young

community, rich in natural resources, and unusually progressive in legislative measures, is no less subject to

this burden. Out of a total population of 783,000 it is estimated that more than 75,000 men, women and

children are dependents, feebleminded, or delinquents. Thus about 10 per cent. of the population is a

constant drain on the finances, health, and future of that community. These figures represent a more definite

and precise survey than the rough one indicated by the statistics of charities and correction for the State of

New York. The figures yielded by this Oregon survey are also considerably lower than the average shown by

the draft examination, a fact which indicates that they are not higher than might be obtained from other

Organized charity is thus confronted with the problem of feeble mindedness and mental defect. But just as

the State has so far neglected the problem of mental defect until this takes the form of criminal delinquency,

so the tendency of our philanthropic and charitable agencies has been to pay no attention to the problem until

it has expressed itself in terms of pauperism and delinquency. Such ``benevolence'' is not merely ineffectual;

But there is a special type of philanthropy or benevolence, now widely advertised and advocated, both as a

federal program and as worthy of private endowment, which strikes me as being more insidiously injurious

than any other. This concerns itself directly with the function of maternity, and aims to supply GRATIS

medical and nursing facilities to slum mothers. Such women are to be visited by nurses and to receive

instruction in the ``hygiene of pregnancy''; to be guided in making arrangements for confinements; to be

invited to come to the doctor's clinics for examination and supervision. They are, we are informed, to

``receive adequate care during pregnancy, at confinement, and for one month afterward.'' Thus are mothers

and babies to be saved. ``Childbearing is to be made safe.'' The work of the maternity centers in the various

American cities in which they have already been established and in which they are supported by private

contributions and endowment, it is hardly necessary to point out, is carried on among the poor and more

docile sections of the city, among mothers least able, through poverty and ignorance, to afford the care and

attention necessary for successful maternity. Now, as the findings of Tredgold and Karl Pearson and the

British Eugenists so conclusively show, and as the infant mortality reports so thoroughly substantiate, a high

rate of fecundity is always associated with the direst poverty, irresponsibility, mental defect, feeble

mindedness, and other transmissible taints. The effect of maternity endowments and maternity centers

supported by private philanthropy would have, perhaps already have had, exactly the most dysgenic

tendency. The new government program would facilitate the function of maternity among the very classes in

Such ``benevolence'' is not merely superficial and nearsighted. It conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not

courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to

become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would

inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the

intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum

the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after to time to bring children

into the world. It merely says ``Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.'' Whereas the

great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children

they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor

woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into

Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly

promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the

world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I

think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the

stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing

On the other hand, the program is an indication of a suddenly awakened public recognition of the shocking

conditions surrounding pregnancy, maternity, and infant welfare prevailing at the very heart of our boasted

civilization. So terrible, so unbelievable, are these conditions of childbearing, degraded far below the level

of primitive and barbarian tribes, nay, even below the plane of brutes, that many highminded people,

confronted with such revolting and disgraceful facts, lost that calmness of vision and impartiality of judgment

so necessary in any serious consideration of this vital problem. Their ``hearts'' are touched; they become

hysterical; they demand immediate action; and enthusiastically and generously they support the first

superficial program that is advanced. Immediate action may sometimes be worse than no action at all. The

``warm heart'' needs the balance of the cool head. Much harm has been done in the world by those too

They do not stop to consider that the very first thing to be done is to subject the whole situation to the deepest

and most rigorous thinking. As the late Walter Bagehot wrote in a significant but too often forgotten passage:

``The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that on the whole it is a question whether the

benevolence of mankind does more good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also

does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great

populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world,

and this is entirely because excellent people fancy they can do much by rapid action, and that they will most

benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen, `something' ought

to be done to stay and prevent it. One may incline to hope that the balance of good over evil is in favor of

benevolence; one can hardly bear to think that it is not so; but anyhow it is certain that there is a most heavy

debt of evil, and that this burden might almost all have been spared us if philanthropists as well as others had

not inherited form their barbarous forefathers a wild passion for instant action.''

It is customary, I believe, to defend philanthropy and charity upon the basis of the sanctity of human life. Yet

recent events in the world reveal a curious contradiction in this respect. Human life is held sacred, as a

general Christian principle, until war is declared, when humanity indulges in a universal debauch of

bloodshed and barbarism, inventing poison gases and every type of diabolic suggestion to facilitate killing

and starvation. Blockades are enforced to weaken and starve civilian populationswomen and children. This

accomplished, the pendulum of mob passion swings back to the opposite extreme, and the compensatory

emotions express themselves in hysterical fashion. Philanthropy and charity are then unleashed. We begin to

hold human life sacred again. We try to save the lives of the people we formerly sought to weaken by

devastation, disease and starvation. We indulge in ``drives,'' in campaigns of relief, in a general orgy of

We are thus witnessing today the inauguration of a vast system of international charity. As in our more

limited communities and cities, where selfsustaining and selfreliant sections of the population are forced to

shoulder the burden of the reckless and irresponsible, so in the great world community the more prosperous

and incidentally less populous nations are asked to relieve and succor those countries which are either the

victims of the widespread havoc of war, of militaristic statesmanship, or of the agelong tradition of

The people of the United States have recently been called upon to exercise their traditional generosity not

merely to aid the European Relief Council in its efforts to keep alive three million, five hundred thousand

starving children in Central Europe, but in addition to contribute to that enormous fund to save the thirty

million Chinese who find themselves at the verge of starvation, owing to one of those recurrent famines

which strike often at that densely populated and inert country, where procreative recklessness is encouraged

as a matter of duty. The results of this international charity have not justified the effort nor repaid the

generosity to which it appealed. In the first place, no effort was made to prevent the recurrence of the

disaster; in the second place, philanthropy of this type attempts to sweep back the tide of miseries created by

unrestricted propagation, with the feeble broom of sentiment. As one of the most observant and impartial of

authorities on the Far East, J. O. P. Bland, has pointed out: ``So long as China maintains a birthrate that is

estimated at fiftyfive per thousand or more, the only possible alternative to these visitations would be

emigration and this would have to be on such a scale as would speedily overrun and overfill the habitable

globe. Neither humanitarian schemes, international charities nor philanthropies can prevent widespread

disaster to a people which habitually breeds up to and beyond the maximum limits of its food supply.'' Upon

this point, it is interesting to add, Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip has likewise pointed out the inefficacy and

Mr. Bland further points out: ``The problem presented is one with which neither humanitarian nor religious

zeal can ever cope, so long as we fail to recognize and attack the fundamental cause of these calamities. As a

matter of sober fact, the benevolent activities of our missionary societies to reduce the deathrate by the

prevention of infanticide and the checking of disease, actually serve in the end to aggravate the pressure of

population upon its foodsupply and to increase the severity of the inevitably resultant catastrophe. What is

needed for the prevention, or, at least, the mitigation of these scourges, is an organized educational

propaganda, directed first against polygamy and the marriage of minors and the unfit, and, next, toward such

a limitation of the birthrate as shall approximate the standard of civilized countries. But so long as Bishops

and well meaning philanthropists in England and America continue to praise and encourage `the glorious

fertility of the East' there can be but little hope of minimizing the penalties of the ruthless struggle for

existence in China, and Nature's law will therefore continue to work out its own pitiless solution, weeding out

This rapid survey is enough, I hope, to indicate the manifold inadequacies inherent in present policies of

philanthropy and charity. The most serious charge that can be brought against modern ``benevolence'' is that

it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous

elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.

Philanthropy is a gesture characteristic of modern business lavishing upon the unfit the profits extorted from

the community at large. Looked at impartially, this compensatory generosity is in its final effect probably

more dangerous, more dysgenic, more blighting than the initial practice of profiteering and the social

War has thrust upon us a new internationalism. Today the world is united by starvation, disease and misery.

We are enjoying the ironic internationalism of hatred. The victors are forced to shoulder the burden of the

vanquished. International philanthropies and charities are organized. The great flux of immigration and

emigration has recommenced. Prosperity is a myth; and the rich are called upon to support huge

philanthropies, in the futile attempt to sweep back the tide of famine and misery. In the face of this new

internationalism, this tangled unity of the world, all proposed political and economic programs reveal a

woeful common bankruptcy. They are fragmentary and superficial. None of them go to the root of this

unprecedented world problem. Politicians offer political solutions,like the League of Nations or the

limitation of navies. Militarists offer new schemes of competitive armament. Marxians offer the Third

Internationale and industrial revolution. Sentimentalists offer charity and philanthropy. Coordination or

The first essential in the solution of any problem is the recognition and statement of the factors involved.

Now in this complex problem which today confronts us, no attempt has been made to state the primary

facts. The statesman believes they are all political. Militarists believe they are all military and naval.

Economists, including under the term the various schools for Socialists, believe they are industrial and

financial. Churchmen look upon them as religious and ethical. What is lacking is the recognition of that

fundamental factor which reflects and coordinates these essential but incomplete phases of the problem,the

factor of reproduction. For in all problems affecting the welfare of a biological species, and particularly in all

problems of human welfare, two fundamental forces work against each other. There is hunger as the driving

force of all our economic, industrial and commercial organizations; and there is the reproductive impulse in

continual conflict with our economic, political settlements, race adjustments and the like. Official moralists,

statesmen, politicians, philanthropists and economists display an astounding disregard of this second

disorganizing factor. They treat the world of men as if it were purely a hunger world instead of a hungersex

world. Yet there is no phase of human society, no question of politics, economics, or industry that is not tied

up in almost equal measure with the expression of both of these primordial impulses. You cannot sweep back

overpowering dynamic instincts by catchwords. You can neglect and thwart sex only at your peril. You

cannot solve the problem of hunger and ignore the problem of sex. They are bound up together.

While the gravest attention is paid to the problem of hunger and food, that of sex is neglected. Politicians and

scientists are ready and willing to speak of such things as a ``high birth rate,'' infant mortality, the dangers of

immigration or overpopulation. But with few exceptions they cannot bring themselves to speak of Birth

Control. Until they shall have broken through the traditional inhibitions concerning the discussion of sexual

matters, until they recognize the force of the sexual instinct, and until they recognize Birth Control as the

PIVOTAL FACTOR in the problem confronting the world today, our statesmen must continue to work in

the dark. Political palliatives will be mocked by actuality. Economic nostrums are blown willynilly in the

A brief survey of the past three or four centuries of Western civilization suggests the urgent need of a new

science to help humanity in the struggle with the vast problem of today's disorder and danger. That problem,

as we envisage it, is fundamentally a sexual problem. Ethical, political, and economic avenues of approach

are insufficient. We must create a new instrument, a new technique to make any adequate solution possible.

The history of the industrial revolution and the dominance of all conquering machinery in Western

civilization show the inadequacy of political and economic measures to meet the terrific rise in population.

The advent of the factory system, due especially to the development of machinery at the beginning of the

nineteenth century, upset all the grandiloquent theories of the previous era. To meet the new situation created

by the industrial revolution arose the new science of ``political economy,'' or economics. Old political

methods proved inadequate to keep pace with the problem presented by the rapid rise of the new machine and

industrial power. The machine era very shortly and decisively exploded the simple belief that ``all men are

born free and equal.'' Political power was superseded by economic and industrial power. To sustain their

supremacy in the political field, governments and politicians allied themselves to the new industrial

oligarchy. Old political theories and practices were totally inadequate to control the new situation or to meet

Just as the eighteenth century saw the rise and proliferation of political theories, the nineteenth witnessed the

creation and development of the science of economics, which aimed to perfect an instrument for the study

and analysis of an industrial society, and to offer a technique for the solution of the multifold problems it

presented. But at the present moment, as the outcome of the machine era and competitive populations, the

world has been thrown into a new situation, the solution of which is impossible solely by political or

The industrial revolution and the development of machinery in Europe and America called into being a new

type of workingclass. Machines were at first termed ``laborsaving devices.'' In reality, as we now know,

mechanical inventions and discoveries created unprecedented and increasingly enormous demand for

``labor.'' The omnipresent and still existing scandal of child labor is ample evidence of this. Machine

production in its opening phases, demanded large, concentrated and exploitable populations. Large

production and the huge development of international trade through improved methods of transport, made

possible the maintenance upon a low level of existence of these rapidly increasing proletarian populations.

With the rise and spread throughout Europe and America of machine production, it is now possible to

correlate the expansion of the ``proletariat.'' The workingclasses bred almost automatically to meet the

The rise in population, the multiplication of proletarian populations as a first result of mechanical industry,

the appearance of great centers of population, the socalled urban drift, and the evils of overcrowding still

remain insufficiently studied and stated. It is a significant though neglected fact that when, after long

agitation in Great Britain, child labor was finally forbidden by law, the supply of children dropped

appreciably. No longer of economic value in the factory, children were evidently a drug in the ``home.'' Yet it

is doubly significant that from this moment British labor began the long unending task of

Nineteenth century economics had no method of studying the interrelation of the biological factors with the

industrial. Overcrowding, overwork, the progressive destruction of responsibility by the machine discipline,

as is now perfectly obvious, had the most disastrous consequences upon human character and human

habits.[2] Paternalistic philanthropies and sentimental charities, which sprang up like mushrooms, only

tended to increase the evils of indiscriminate breeding. From the physiological and psychological point of

Dr. Austin Freeman has recently pointed out [3] some of the physiological, psychological, and racial effects

of machinery upon the proletariat, the breeders of the world. Speaking for Great Britain, Dr. Freeman

suggests that the omnipresence of machinery tends toward the production of large but inferior populations.

Evidences of biological and racial degeneracy are apparent to this observer. ``Compared with the African

negro,'' he writes, ``the British subman is in several respects markedly inferior. He tends to be dull; he is

usually quite helpless and unhandy; he has, as a rule, no skill or knowledge of handicraft, or indeed

knowledge of any kind....Over population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is

mechanism which has created conditions favorable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.''

The whole indictment against machinery is summarized by Dr. Freeman: ``Mechanism by its reactions on

man and his environment is antagonistic to human welfare. It has destroyed industry and replaced it by mere

labor; it has degraded and vulgarized the works of man; it has destroyed social unity and replaced it by social

disintegration and class antagonism to an extent which directly threatens civilization; it has injuriously

affected the structural type of society by developing its organization at the expense of the individual; it has

endowed the inferior man with political power which he employs to the common disadvantage by creating

political institutions of a socially destructive type; and finally by its reactions on the activities of war it

constitutes an agent for the wholesale physical destruction of man and his works and the extinction of human

It is not necessary to be in absolute agreement with this diagnostician to realize the menace of machinery,

which tends to emphasize quantity and mere number at the expense of quality and individuality. One thing is

certain. If machinery is detrimental to biological fitness, the machine must be destroyed, as it was in Samuel

Butler's ``Erewhon.'' But perhaps there is another way of mastering this problem.

Altruism, humanitarianism and philanthropy have aided and abetted machinery in the destruction of

responsibility and selfreliance among the least desirable elements of the proletariat. In contrast with the

previous epoch of discovery of the New World, of exploration and colonization, when a centrifugal influence

was at work upon the populations of Europe, the advent of machinery has brought with it a counteracting

centripetal effect. The result has been the accumulation of large urban populations, the increase of

Just as eighteenth century politics and political theories were unable to keep pace with the economic and

capitalistic aggressions of the nineteenth century, so also we find, if we look closely enough, that nineteenth

century economics is inadequate to lead the world out of the catastrophic situation into which it has been

thrown by the debacle of the World War. Economists are coming to recognize that the purely economic

interpretation of contemporary events is insufficient. Too long, as one of them has stated, orthodox

economists have overlooked the important fact that ``human life is dynamic, that change, movement,

evolution, are its basic characteristics; that self expression, and therefore freedom of choice and movement,

Economists themselves are breaking with the old ``dismal science'' of the Manchester school, with its sterile

study of ``supply and demand,'' of prices and exchange, of wealth and labor. Like the Chicago Vice

Commission, nineteenthcentury economists (many of whom still survive into our own day) considered sex

merely as something to be legislated out of existence. They had the right idea that wealth consisted solely of

material things used to promote the welfare of certain human beings. Their idea of capital was somewhat

confused. They apparently decided that capital was merely that part of capital used to produce profit. Prices,

exchanges, commercial statistics, and financial operations comprised the subject matter of these older

economists. It would have been considered ``unscientific'' to take into account the human factors involved.

They might study the wear andtear and depreciation of machinery: but the depreciation or destruction of

the human race did not concern them. Under ``wealth'' they never included the vast, wasted treasury of

Economists today are awake to the imperative duty of dealing with the whole of human nature, with the

relation of men, women, and children to their environmentphysical and psychic as well as social; of

dealing with all those factors which contribute to human sustenance, happiness and welfare. The economist,

at length, investigates human motives. Economics outgrows the outworn metaphysical preconceptions of

nineteenth century theory. Today we witness the creation of a new ``welfare'' or social economics, based on

a fuller and more complete knowledge of the human race, upon a recognition of sex as well as of hunger; in

brief, of physiological instincts and psychological demands. The newer economists are beginning to

recognize that their science heretofore failed to take into account the most vital factors in modern

industryit failed to foresee the inevitable consequences of compulsory motherhood; the catastrophic effects

of child labor upon racial health; the overwhelming importance of national vitality and wellbeing; the

international ramifications of the population problem; the relation of indiscriminate breeding to

feeblemindedness, and industrial inefficiency. It speculated too little or not at all on human motives. Human

nature riots through the traditional economic structure, as Carlton Parker pointed out, with ridicule and

Inevitably we are driven to the conclusion that the exhaustively economic interpretation of contemporary

history is inadequate to meet the present situation. In his suggestive book, ``The Acquisitive Society,'' R. H.

Tawney, arrives at the conclusion that ``obsession by economic issues is as local and transitory as it is

repulsive and disturbing. To future generations it will appear as pitiable as the obsession of the seventeenth

century by religious quarrels appears to day; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which it is

concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames every wound and turns each trivial scratch into

a malignant ulcer. Society will not solve the particular problems of industry until that poison is expelled, and

it has learned to see industry in its proper perspective. IF IT IS TO DO THAT IT MUST REARRANGE THE

SCALE OF VALUES. It must regard economic interests as one element in life, not as the whole of life....''[5]

In neglecting or minimizing the great factor of sex in human society, the Marxian doctrine reveals itself as no

stronger than orthodox economics in guiding our way to a sound civilization. It works within the same

intellectual limitations. Much as we are indebted to the Marxians for pointing out the injustice of modern

industrialism, we should never close our eyes to the obvious limitations of their own ``economic

interpretation of history.'' While we must recognize the great historical value of Marx, it is now evident that

his vision of the ``class struggle,'' of the bitter irreconcilable warfare between the capitalist and working

classes was based not upon historical analysis, but upon on unconscious dramatization of a superficial aspect

In emphasizing the conflict between the classes, Marx failed to recognize the deeper unity of the proletariat

and the capitalist. Nineteenth century capitalism had in reality engendered and cultivated the very type of

working class best suited to its own purposean inert, docile, irresponsible and submissive class,

progressively incapable of effective and aggressive organization. Like the economists of the Manchester

school, Marx failed to recognize the interplay of human instincts in the world of industry. All the virtues were

embodied in the beloved proletariat; all the villainies in the capitalists. The greatest asset of the capitalism of

that age was, as a matter of fact, the uncontrolled breeding among the laboring classes. The intelligent and

selfconscious section of the workers was forced to bear the burden of the unemployed and the poverty

Marx was fully aware of the consequences of this condition of things, but shut his eyes tightly to the cause.

He pointed out that capitalistic power was dependent upon ``the reserve army of labor,'' surplus labor, and a

wide margin of unemployment. He practically admitted that overpopulation was the inevitable soil of

predatory capitalism. But he disregarded the most obvious consequence of that admission. It was all very

dramatic and grandiloquent to tell the workingmen of the world to unite, that they had ``nothing but their

chains to lose and the world to gain.'' Cohesion of any sort, united and voluntary organization, as events have

proved, is impossible in populations bereft of intelligence, selfdiscipline and even the material necessities of

life, and cheated by their desires and ignorance into unrestrained and uncontrolled fertility.

In pointing out the limitations and fallacies of the orthodox Marxian opinion, my purpose is not to depreciate

the efforts of the Socialists aiming to create a new society, but rather to emphasize what seems to me the

greatest and most neglected truth of our day:Unless sexual science is incorporated as an integral part of

worldstatesmanship and the pivotal importance of Birth Control is recognized in any program of

reconstruction, all efforts to create a new world and a new civilization are foredoomed to failure.

We can hope for no advance until we attain a new conception of sex, not as a merely propagative act, not

merely as a biological necessity for the perpetuation of the race, but as a psychic and spiritual avenue of

expression. It is the limited, inhibited conception of sex that vitiates so much of the thought and ideation of

Like most of our social idealists, statesmen, politicians and economists, some of the Eugenists suffer

intellectually from a restricted and inhibited understanding of the function of sex. This limited understanding,

this narrowness of vision, which gives rise to most of the misconceptions and condemnations of the doctrine

of Birth Control, is responsible or the failure of politicians and legislators to enact practical statutes or to

remove traditional obscenities from the law books. The most encouraging sign at present is the recognition by

modern psychology of the central importance of the sexual instinct in human society, and the rapid spread of

this new concept among the more enlightened sections of the civilized communities. The new conception of

sex has been well stated by one to whom the debt of contemporary civilization is wellnigh immeasurable.

``Sexual activity,'' Havelock Ellis has written, ``is not merely a baldly propagative act, nor, when propagation

is put aside, is it merely the relief of distended vessels. It is something more even than the foundation of great

social institutions. It is the function by which all the finer activities of the organism, physical and psychic,

No less than seventy years ago, a profound but neglected thinker, George Drysdale, emphasized the necessity

of a thorough understanding of man's sexual nature in approaching economic, political and social problems.

``Before we can undertake the calm and impartial investigation of any social problem, we must first of all

free ourselves from all those sexual prejudices which are so vehement and violent and which so completely

distort our vision of the external world. Society as a whole has yet to fight its way through an almost

impenetrable forest of sexual taboos.'' Drysdale's words have lost none of their truth even today: ``There are

few things from which humanity has suffered more than the degraded and irreverent feelings of mystery and

shame that have been attached to the genital and excretory organs. The former have been regarded, like their

corresponding mental passions, as something of a lower and baser nature, tending to degrade and carnalize

man by their physical appetites. But we cannot take a debasing view of any part of our humanity without

Drysdale moreover clearly recognized the social crime of entrusting to sexual barbarians the duty of

legislating and enforcing laws detrimental to the welfare of all future generations. ``They trust blindly to

authority for the rules they blindly lay down,'' he wrote, ``perfectly unaware of the awful and complicated

nature of the subject they are dealing with so confidently and of the horrible evils their unconsidered

statements are attended with. They themselves break through the most fundamentally important laws daily in

Psychologists today courageously emphasize the integral relationship of the expression of the sexual instinct

with every phase of human activity. Until we recognize this central fact, we cannot understand the

implications and the sinister significance of superficial attempts to apply rosewater remedies to social

evils,by the enactment of restrictive and superficial legislation, by wholesale philanthropies and charities,

by publicly burying our heads in the sands of sentimentality. Selfappointed censors, grossly immoral

``moralists,'' makeshift legislators, all face a heavy responsibility for the miseries, diseases, and social evils

they perpetuate or intensify by enforcing the primitive taboos of aboriginal customs, traditions, and outworn

laws, which at every step hinder the education of the people in the scientific knowledge of their sexual nature.

Puritanic and academic taboo of sex in education and religion is as disastrous to human welfare as

prostitution or the venereal scourges. ``We are compelled squarely to face the distorting influences of

biologically aborted reformers as well as the wastefulness of seducers,'' Dr. Edward A. Kempf recently

declared. ``Man arose from the ape and inherited his passions, which he can only refine but dare not attempt

to castrate unless he would destroy the fountains of energy that maintain civilization and make life worth

living and the world worth beautifying....We do not have a problem that is to be solved by making repressive

laws and executing them. Nothing will be more disastrous. Society must make life worth the living and the

refining for the individual by conditioning him to love and to seek the loveobject in a manner that reflects a

constructive effect upon his fellowmen and by giving him suitable opportunities. The virility of the

automatic apparatus is destroyed by excessive gormandizing or hunger, by excessive wealth or poverty, by

excessive work or idleness, by sexual abuse or intolerant prudishness. The noblest and most difficult art of all

[1] It may be well to note, in this connection, that the decline in the birth rate among the more intelligent

classes of British labor followed upon the famous BradlaughBesant trial of 1878, the outcome of the attempt

of these two courageous Birth Control pioneers to circulate among the workers the work of an American

physician, Dr. Knowlton's ``The Fruits of Philosophy,'' advocating Birth Control, and the widespread

publicity resulting fromt his trial. [2] Cf. The Creative Impulse in Industry, by Helen Marot. The Instinct of

Workmanship, by Thorstein Veblen. [3] Social Decay and Regeneration. By R. Austin Freeman. London

1921. [4] Carlton H. Parker: The Casual Laborer and other essays: p. 30. [5] R. H. Tawney. The Acquisitive

Society, p. 184. [6] Medical Review of Reviews: Vol. XXVI, p. 116. [7] The Elements of Social Science:

London, 1854. [8] Proceedings of the International Conference of Women Physicians. Vol. IV, pp. 6667.

Marxian Socialism, which seeks to solve the complex problem of human misery by economic and proletarian

revolution, has manifested a new vitality. Every shade of Socialistic thought and philosophy acknowledges its

indebtedness to the vision of Karl Marx and his conception of the class struggle. Yet the relation of Marxian

Socialism to the philosophy of Birth Control, especially in the minds of most Socialists, remains hazy and

confused. No thorough understanding of Birth Control, its aims and purposes, is possible until this confusion

has been cleared away, and we come to a realization that Birth Control is not merely independent of, but even

antagonistic to the Marxian dogma. In recent years many Socialists have embraced the doctrine of Birth

Control, and have generously promised us that ``under Socialism'' voluntary motherhood will be adopted and

popularized as part of a general educational system. We might more logically reply that no Socialism will

Many Socialists today remain ignorant of the inherent conflict between the idea of Birth Control and the

philosophy of Marx. The earlier Marxians, including Karl Marx himself, expressed the bitterest antagonism

to Malthusian and neoMalthusian theories. A remarkable feature of early Marxian propaganda has been the

almost complete unanimity with which the implications of the Malthusian doctrine have been derided,

denounced and repudiated. Any defense of the socalled ``law of population'' was enough to stamp one, in

the eyes of the orthodox Marxians, as a ``tool of the capitalistic class,'' seeking to dampen the ardor of those

who expressed the belief that men might create a better world for themselves. Malthus, they claimed, was

actuated by selfish class motives. He was not merely a hidebound aristocrat, but a pessimist who was trying

to kill all hope of human progress. By Marx, Engels, Bebel, Karl Kautsky, and all the celebrated leaders and

interpreters of Marx's great ``Bible of the working class,'' down to the martyred Rosa Luxemburg and Karl

Liebknecht, Birth Control has been looked upon as a subtle, Machiavellian sophistry created for the purpose

of placing the blame for human misery elsewhere than at the door of the capitalist class. Upon this point the

Marxian vituperation of Malthus and his followers is illuminating. It reveals not the weakness of the thinker

attacked, but of the aggressor. This is nowhere more evident than in Marx's ``Capital'' itself. In that

monumental effort, it is impossible to discover any adequate refutation or even calm discussion of the

dangers of irresponsible parenthood and reckless breeding, any suspicion that this recklessness and

irresponsibility is even remotely related to the miseries of the proletariat. Poor Malthus is there relegated to

the humble level of a footnote. ``If the reader reminds me of Malthus, whose essay on Population appeared in

1798,'' Marx remarks somewhat tartly, ``I remind him that this work in its first form is nothing more than a

schoolboyish, superficial plagiary of De Foe, Sir James Steuart, Townsend, Franklin, Wallace, etc., and does

not contain a single sentence thought out by himself. The great sensation this pamphlet caused was due solely

to party interest. The French Revolution had passionate defenders in the United Kingdom.... `The Principles

of Population' was quoted with jubilance by the English oligarchy as the great destroyer of all hankerings

The only attempt that Marx makes here toward answering the theory of Malthus is to declare that most of the

population theory teachers were merely Protestant parsons.``Parson Wallace, Parson Townsend, Parson

Malthus and his pupil the ArchParson Thomas Chalmers, to say nothing of the lesser reverend scribblers in

this line.'' The great pioneer of ``scientific'' Socialism the proceeds to berate parsons as philosophers and

economists, using this method of escape from the very pertinent question of surplus population and surplus

proletariat in its relation to labor organization and unemployment. It is true that elsewhere [2] he goes so far

as to admit that ``even Malthus recognized overpopulation as a necessity of modern industry, though, after

his narrow fashion, he explains it by the absolute overgrowth of the laboring population, not by their

becoming relatively supernumerary.'' A few pages later, however, Marx comes back again to the question of

overpopulation, failing to realize that it is to the capitalists' advantage that the working classes are

unceasingly prolific. ``The folly is now patent,'' writes the unsuspecting Marx, ``of the economic wisdom that

preaches to the laborers the accommodation of their numbers to the requirements of capital. The mechanism

of capitalist production and accumulation constantly affects this adjustment. The first work of this adaptation

is the creation of a relatively surplus population or industrial reserve army. Its last work is the misery of

constantly extending strata of the army of labor, and the dead weight of pauperism.'' A little later he ventures

again in the direction of Malthusianism so far as to admit that ``the accumulation of wealth at one pole is...at

the same time the accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality and mental degradation

at the opposite pole.'' Nevertheless, there is no indication that Marx permitted himself to see that the

proletariat accommodates its numbers to the ``requirements of capital'' precisely by breeding a large, docile,

Had the purpose of Marx been impartial and scientific, this trifling difference might easily have been

overcome and the dangers of reckless breeding insisted upon. But beneath all this wordy pretension and

economic jargon, we detect another aim. That is the unconscious dramatization of human society into the

``class conflict.'' Nothing was overlooked that might sharpen and accentuate this ``conflict.'' Marx depicted a

great melodramatic conflict, in which all the virtues were embodied in the proletariat and all the villainies in

the capitalist. In the end, as always in such dramas, virtue was to be rewarded and villainy punished. The

working class was the temporary victim of a subtle but thorough conspiracy of tyranny and repression.

Capitalists, intellectuals and the BOURGEOISIE were all ``in on'' this diabolic conspiracy, all thoroughly

familiar with the plot, which Marx was so sure he had uncovered. In the last act was to occur that catastrophic

revolution, with the final transformation scene of the Socialist millenium. Presented in ``scientific''

phraseology, with all the authority of economic terms, ``Capital'' appeared at the psychological moment. The

heaven of the traditional theology had been shattered by Darwinian science, and here, dressed up in all the

authority of the new science, appeared a new theology, the promise of a new heaven, an earthly paradise,

with an impressive scale of rewards for the faithful and ignominious punishments for the capitalists.

Critics have often been puzzled by the tremendous vitality of this work. Its prediction s have never, despite

the claims of the faithful, been fulfilled. Instead of diminishing, the spirit of nationalism has been intensified

tenfold. In nearly every respect Marx's predictions concerning the evolution of historical and economic forces

have been contradicted by events, culminating in the great war. Most of his followers, the ``revolutionary''

Socialists, were swept into the whirlpool of nationalistic militarism. Nevertheless, this ``Bible of the working

classes'' still enjoys a tremendous authority as a scientific work. By some it is regarded as an economic

treatise; by others as a philosophy of history; by others as a collection of sociological laws; and finally by

others as a moral and political book of reference. Criticized, refuted, repudiated and demolished by

specialists, it nevertheless exerts its influences and retains its mysterious vitality.

We must seek the explanation of this secret elsewhere. Modern psychology has taught us that human nature

has a tendency to place the cause of its own deficiencies and weaknesses outside of itself, to attribute to some

external agency, to some enemy or group of enemies, the blame for its own misery. In his great work Marx

unconsciously strengthens and encourages this tendency. The immediate effect of his teaching, vulgarized

and popularized in a hundred different forms, is to relieve the proletariat of all responsibility for the effects of

The inherent truth in the Marxian teachings was, moreover, immediately subordinated to their emotional and

religious appeal. A book that could so influence European thought could not be without merit. But in the

process of becoming the ``Bible of the working classes,'' ``Capital'' suffered the fate of all such ``Bibles.'' The

spirit of ecclesiastical dogmatism was transfused into the religion of revolutionary Socialism. This dogmatic

religious quality has been noted by many of the most observant critics of Socialism. Marx was too readily

accepted as the father of the church, and ``Capital'' as the sacred gospel of the social revolution. All questions

of tactics, of propaganda, of class warfare, of political policy, were to be solved by apt quotations from the

``good book.'' New thoughts, new schemes, new programs, based upon tested fact and experience, the

outgrowth of newer discoveries concerning the nature of men, upon the recognition of the mistakes of the

master, could only be approved or admitted according as they could or could not be tested by some bit of text

quoted from Marx. His followers assumed that Karl Marx had completed the philosophy of Socialism, and

that the duty of the proletariat thenceforth was not to think for itself, but merely to mobilize itself under

From the day of this apotheosis of Marx until our own, the ``orthodox'' Socialist of any shade is of the belief

that the first essential for social salvation lies in unquestioning belief in the dogmas of Marx.

The curious and persistent antagonism to Birth Control that began with Marx and continues to our own day

can be explained only as the utter refusal or inability to consider humanity in its physiological and

psychological aspectsthese aspects, apparently, having no place in the ``economic interpretation of

history.'' It has remained for George Bernard Shaw, a Socialist with a keener spiritual insight than the

ordinary Marxist, to point out the disastrous consequences of rapid multiplication which are obvious to the

small cultivator, the peasant proprietor, the lowest farmhand himself, but which seem to arouse the orthodox,

intellectual Marxian to inordinate fury. ``But indeed the more you degrade the workers,'' Shaw once wrote,[3]

``robbing them of all artistic enjoyment, and all chance of respect and admiration from their fellows, the more

you throw them back, reckless, upon the one pleasure and the one human tie left to them the gratification

of their instinct for producing fresh supplies of men. You will applaud this instinct as divine until at last the

excessive supply becomes a nuisance: there comes a plague of men; and you suddenly discover that the

instinct is diabolic, and set up a cry of `overpopulation.' But your slaves are beyond caring for your cries:

they breed like rabbits: and their poverty breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease, obscenity, drunkenness.''

Lack of insight into fundamental truths of human nature is evident throughout the writings of the Marxians.

The Marxian Socialists, according to Kautsky, defended women in industry: it was right for woman to work

in factories in order to preserve her equality with man! Man must not support woman, declared the great

French Socialist Guesde, because that would make her the PROLETAIRE of man! Bebel, the great authority

on woman, famous for his erudition, having critically studied the problem of population, suggested as a

remedy for too excessive fecundity the consumption of a certain lard soup reputed to have an

``antigenerative'' effect upon the agricultural population of Upper Bavaria! Such are the results of the literal

and uncritical acceptance of Marx's static and mechanical conception of human society, a society perfectly

automatic; in which competition is always operating at maximum efficiency; one vast and unending

This lack of insight of the orthodox Marxians, long represented by the German SocialDemocrats, is

nowhere better illustrated than in Dr. Robinson's account of a mass meeting of the SocialDemocrat party to

organize public opinion against the doctrine of Birth Control among the poor.[4] ``Another meeting had taken

place the week before, at which several eminent Socialist women, among them Rosa Luxemburg and Clara

Zetkin, spoke very strongly against limitation of offspring among the poorin fact the title of the discussion

was GEGEN DEN GEBURTSTREIK! `Against the birth strike!' The interest of the audience was intense.

One could see that with them it was not merely a dialectic question, as it was with their leaders, but a matter

of life and death. I came to attend a meeting AGAINST the limitation of offspring; it soon proved to be a

meeting very decidedly FOR the limitation of offspring, for every speaker who spoke in favor of the artificial

prevention of conception or undesired pregnancies, was greeted with vociferous, longlasting applause; while

those who tried to persuade the people that a limited number of children is not a proletarian weapon, and

would not improve their lot, were so hissed that they had difficulty going on. The speakers who were against

the...idea soon felt that their audience was against them....Why was there such small attendance at the regular

Socialistic meetings, while the meetings of this character were packed to suffocation? It did not apparently

penetrate the leaders' heads that the reason was a simple one. Those meetings were evidently of no interest to

them, while those which dealt with the limitation of offspring were of personal, vital, present interest....What

particularly amused meand pained me in the antilimitationists was the ease and equanimity with which

they advised the poor women to keep on bearing children. The woman herself was not taken into

consideration, as if she was not a human being, but a machine. What are her sufferings, her labor pains, her

inability to read, to attend meetings, to have a taste of life? What does she amount to? The proletariat needs

fighters. Go on, females, and breed like animals. Maybe of the thousands you bear a few will become party

The militant organization of the Marxian Socialists suggests that their campaign must assume the tactics of

militarism of the familiar type. As represented by militaristic governments, militarism like Socialism has

always encouraged the proletariat to increase and multiply. Imperial Germany was the outstanding and awful

example of this attitude. Before the war the fall in the birthrate was viewed by the Junker party with the

gravest misgivings. Bernhardi and the protagonists of DEUTSCHLANDUBERALLES condemned it in

the strongest terms. The Marxians unconsciously repeat the words of the government representative, Krohne,

who, in a debate on the subject in the Prussian Diet, February 1916, asserted: ``Unfortunately this view has

gained followers amongst the German women....These women, in refusing to rear strong and able children to

continue the race, drag into the dust that which is the highest end of womenmotherhood. It is to be hoped

that the willingness to bear sacrifices will lead to a change for the better....We need an increase in human

beings to guard against the attacks of envious neighbors as well as to fulfil our cultural mission. Our whole

economic development depends on increase of our people.'' Today we are fully aware of how imperial

Germany fulfiled that cultural mission of hers; nor can we overlook the fact that the countries with a smaller

birthrate survived the ordeal. Even from the traditional militaristic standpoint, strength does not reside in

numbers, though the Caesars, the Napoleons and the Kaisers of the world have always believed that large

exploitable populations were necessary for their own individual power. If Marxian dictatorship means the

dictatorship of a small minority wielding power in the interest of the proletariat, a highbirth rate may be

necessary, though we may here recall the answer of the lamented Dr. Alfred Fried to the German imperialists:

``It is madness, the apotheosis of unreason, to wish to breed and care for human beings in order that in the

flower of their youth they may be sent in millions to be slaughtered wholesale by machinery. We need no

wholesale production of men, have no need of the `fruitful fertility of women,' no need of wholesale wares,

fattened and dressed for slaughter What we do need is careful maintenance of those already born. If the

bearing of children is a moral and religious duty, then it is a much higher duty to secure the sacredness and

security of human life, so that children born and bred with trouble and sacrifice may not be offered up in the

Marxism has developed a patriotism of its own, if indeed it has not yet been completely crystallized into a

religion. Like the ``capitalistic'' governments it so vehemently attacks, it demands selfsacrifice and even

martyrdom from the faithful comrades. But since its strength depends to so great a degree upon ``conversion,''

upon docile acceptance of the doctrines of the ``Master'' as interpreted by the popes and bishops of this new

church, it fails to arouse the irreligious proletariat. The Marxian Socialist boasts of his understanding of

``working class psychology'' and criticizes the lack of this understanding on the part of all dissenters. But, as

the Socialists' meetings against the ``birth strike'' indicate, the working class is not interested in such

generalities as the Marxian ``theory of value,'' the ``iron law'' of wages, ``the value of commodities'' and the

rest of the hazy articles of faith. Marx inherited the rigid nationalistic psychology of the eighteenth century,

and his followers, for the most part, have accepted his mechanical and superficial treatment of instinct.[5]

Discontented workers may rally to Marxism because it places the blame for their misery outside of

themselves and depicts their conditions as the result of a capitalistic conspiracy, thereby satisfying that innate

tendency of every human being to shift the blame to some living person outside himself, and because it

strengthens his belief that his sufferings and difficulties may be overcome by the immediate amelioration of

his economic environment. In this manner, psychologists tell us, neuroses and inner compulsions are fostered.

No true solution is possible, to continue this analogy, until the worker is awakened to the realization that the

roots of his malady lie deep in his own nature, his own organism, his own habits. To blame everything upon

the capitalist and the environment produced by capitalism is to focus attention upon merely one of the

elements of the problem. The Marxian too often forgets that before there was a capitalist there was exercised

the unlimited reproductive activity of mankind, which produced the first overcrowding, the first want. This

goaded humanity into its industrial frenzy, into warfare and theft and slavery. Capitalism has not created the

lamentable state of affairs in which the world now finds itself. It has grown out of them, armed with the

inevitable power to take advantage of our swarming, spawning millions. As that valiant thinker Monsieur G.

Hardy has pointed out [6] the proletariat may be looked upon, not as the antagonist of capitalism, but as its

accomplice. Labor surplus, or the ``army of reserve'' which as for decades and centuries furnished the

industrial background of human misery, which so invariably defeats strikes and labor revolts, cannot honestly

be blamed upon capitalism. It is, as M. Hardy points out, of SEXUAL and proletarian origin. In bringing too

many children into the world, in adding to the total of misery, in intensifying the evils of overcrowding, the

proletariat itself increases the burden of organized labor; even of the Socialist and Syndicalist organizations

themselves with a surplus of the docilely inefficient, with those great uneducable and unorganizable masses.

With surprisingly few exceptions, Marxians of all countries have docilely followed their master in rejecting,

with bitterness and vindictiveness that is difficult to explain, the principles and teachings of Birth Control.

Hunger alone is not responsible for the bitter struggle for existence we witness today in our overadvertised

civilization. Sex, uncontrolled, misdirected, overstimulated and misunderstood, has run riot at the

instigation of priest, militarist and exploiter. Uncontrolled sex has rendered the proletariat prostrate, the

capitalist powerful. In this continuous, unceasing alliance of sexual instinct and hunger we find the reason for

the decline of all the finer sentiments. These instincts tear asunder the thin veils of culture and hypocrisy and

expose to our gaze the dark sufferings of gaunt humanity. So have we become familiar with the everyday

spectacle of distorted bodies, of harsh and frightful diseases stalking abroad in the light of day; of misshapen

heads and visages of moron and imbecile; of starving children in city streets and schools. This is the true soil

of unspeakable crimes. Defect and delinquency join hands with disease, and accounts of inconceivable and

revolting vices are dished up in the daily press. When the majority of men and women are driven by the grim

lash of sex and hunger in the unending struggle to feed themselves and to carry the deadweight of dead and

dying progeny, when little children are forced into factories, streets, and shops, educationincluding even

education in the Marxian dogmasis quite impossible; and civilization is more completely threatened than it

But, it will be pointed out, the working class has advanced. Power has been acquired by labor unions and

syndicates. In the beginning power was won by the principle of the restriction of numbers. The device of

refusing to admit more than a fixed number of new members to the unions of the various trades has been

justified as necessary for the upholding of the standard of wages and of working conditions. This has been the

practice in precisely those unions which have been able through years of growth and development to attain

tangible strength and power. Such a principle of restriction is necessary in the creation of a firmly and deeply

rooted trunk or central organization furnishing a local center for more extended organization. It is upon this

great principle of restricted number that the labor unions have generated and developed power. They have

acquired this power without any religious emotionalism, without subscribing to metaphysical or economic

theology. For the millenium and the earthly paradise to be enjoyed at some indefinitely future date, the union

member substitutes the very real politics of organization with its resultant benefits. He increases his own

independence and comfort and that of his family. He is immune to superstitious belief in and respect for the

mysterious power of political or economic nostrums to reconstruct human society according to the Marxian

In rejecting the Marxian hypothesis as superficial and fragmentary, we do so not because of its socalled

revolutionary character, its threat to the existing order of things, but rather because of its superficial,

emotional and religious character and its deleterious effect upon the life of reason. Like other schemes

advanced by the alarmed and the indignant, it relies too much upon moral fervor and enthusiasm. To build

any social program upon the shifting sands of sentiment and feeling, of indignation or enthusiasm, is a

dangerous and foolish task. On the other hand, we should not minimize the importance of the Socialist

movement in so valiantly and so courageously battling against the stagnating complacency of our

conservatives and reactionaries, under whose benign imbecility the defective and diseased elements of

humanity are encouraged ``full speed ahead'' in their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning.

``...If we ignore this and other sexual subjects, we may do whatever else we like: we may bully, we may

bluster, we may rage, We may foam at the mouth; we may tear down Heaven with our prayers, we may

exhaust ourselves with weeping over the sorrows of the poor; we may narcotize ourselves and others with the

opiate of Christian resignation; we may dissolve the realities of human woe in a delusive mirage of poetry

and ideal philosophy; we may lavish our substance in charity, and labor over possible or impossible Poor

Laws; we may form wild dreams of Socialism, industrial regiments, universal brotherhood, red republics, or

unexampled revolutions; we may strangle and murder each other, we may persecute and despise those whose

sexual necessities force them to break through our unnatural moral codes; we may burn alive if we please the

prostitutes and the adulterers; we may break our own and our neighbor's hearts against the adamantine laws

that surround us, but not one step, not one shall we advance, till we acknowledge these laws, and adopt the

only possible mode in which they can be obeyed.'' These words were written in 1854. Recent events have

[1] Marx: ``Capital.'' Vol. I, p. 675. [2] Op. cit. pp, 695, 707, 709. [3] Fabian Essays in Socialism. p. 21. [4]

Uncontrolled Breeding, By Adelyne More. p. 84. [5] For a sympathetic treatment of modern psychological

research as bearing on Communism, by two convinced Communists see ``Creative Revolution,'' by Eden and

Eugenics has been defined as ``the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the

racial qualities of future generations, either mentally or physically.'' While there is no inherent conflict

between Socialism and Eugenics, the latter is, broadly, the antithesis of the former. In its propaganda,

Socialism emphasizes the evil effects of our industrial and economic system. It insists upon the necessity of

satisfying material needs, upon sanitation, hygiene, and education to effect the transformation of society. The

Socialist insists that healthy humanity is impossible without a radical improvement of the socialand

therefore of the economic and industrialenvironment. The Eugenist points out that heredity is the great

determining factor in the lives of men and women. Eugenics is the attempt to solve the problem from the

biological and evolutionary point of view. You may ring all the changes possible on ``Nurture'' or

environment, the Eugenist may say to the Socialist, but comparatively little can be effected until you control

biological and hereditary elements of the problem. Eugenics thus aims to seek out the root of our trouble, to

study humanity as a kinetic, dynamic, evolutionary organism, shifting and changing with the successive

generations, rising and falling, cleansing itself of inherent defects, or under adverse and dysgenic influences,

``Eugenics'' was first defined by Sir Francis Galton in his ``Human Faculty'' in 1884, and was subsequently

developed into a science and into an educational effort. Galton's ideal was the rational breeding of human

beings. The aim of Eugenics, as defined by its founder, is to bring as many influences as can be reasonably

employed, to cause the useful classes of the community to contribute MORE than their proportion to the next

generation. Eugenics thus concerns itself with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also

with those that develop them to the utmost advantage. It is, in short, the attempt to bring reason and

intelligence to bear upon HEREDITY. But Galton, in spite of the immense value of this approach and his

great stimulation to criticism, was completely unable to formulate a definite and practical working program.

He hoped at length to introduce Eugenics ``into the national conscience like a new religion....I see no

impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious dogma among mankind, but its details must first be worked

out sedulously in the study. Overzeal leading to hasty action, would do harm by holding out expectations of

a new golden age, which will certainly be falsified and cause the science to be discredited. The first and main

point is to secure the general intellectual acceptance of Eugenics as a hopeful and most important study.

Then, let its principles work into the heart of the nation, who will gradually give practical effect to them in

Galton formulated a general law of inheritance which declared that an individual receives onehalf of his

inheritance from his two parents, onefourth from his four grandparents, oneeighth from his great

grandparents, onesixteenth from his greatgreat grandparents, and so on by diminishing fractions to his

primordial ancestors, the sum of all these fractions added together contributing to the whole of the inherited

makeup. The trouble with this generalization, from the modern Mendelian point of view, is that it fails to

define what ``characters'' one would get in the onehalf that came from one's parents, or the onefourth from

one's grandparents. The whole of our inheritance is not composed of these indefinitely made up fractional

parts. We are interested rather in those more specific traits or characters, mental or physical, which, in the

Mendelian view, are structural and functional units, making up a mosaic rather than a blend. The laws of

heredity are concerned with the precise behavior, during a series of generations, of these specific unit

characters. This behavior, as the study of Genetics shows, may be determined in lesser organisms by

The problem of human heredity is now seen to be infinitely more complex than imagined by Galton and his

followers, and the optimistic hope of elevating Eugenics to the level of a religion is a futile one. Most of the

Eugenists, including Professor Karl Pearson and his colleagues of the Eugenics Laboratory of the University

of London and of the biometric laboratory in University College, have retained the ageold point of view of

``Nature vs. Nurture'' and have attempted to show the predominating influence of Heredity AS OPPOSED

TO Environment. This may be true; but demonstrated and repeated in investigation after investigation, it

nevertheless remains fruitless and unprofitable from the practical point of view.

We should not minimize the great outstanding service of Eugenics for critical and diagnostic investigations. It

demonstrates, not in terms of glittering generalization but in statistical studies of investigations reduced to

measurement and number, that uncontrolled fertility is universally correlated with disease, poverty,

overcrowding and the transmission of hereditable taints. Professor Pearson and his associates show us that

``if fertility be correlated with antisocial hereditary characters, a population will inevitably degenerate.''

This degeneration has already begun. Eugenists demonstrate that two thirds of our manhood of military age

are physically too unfit to shoulder a rifle; that the feebleminded, the syphilitic, the irresponsible and the

defective breed unhindered; that women are driven into factories and shops on dayshift and nightshift; that

children, frail carriers of the torch of life, are put to work at an early age; that society at large is breeding an

everincreasing army of undersized, stunted and dehumanized slaves; that the vicious circle of mental and

physical defect, delinquency and beggary is encouraged, by the unseeing and unthinking sentimentality of our

All these things the Eugenists sees and points out with a courage entirely admirable. But as a positive

program of redemption, orthodox Eugenics can offer nothing more ``constructive'' than a renewed ``cradle

competition'' between the ``fit'' and the ``unfit.'' It sees that the most responsible and most intelligent

members of society are the less fertile; that the feebleminded are the more fertile. Herein lies the unbalance,

the great biological menace to the future of civilization. Are we heading to biological destruction, toward the

gradual but certain attack upon the stocks of intelligence and racial health by the sinister forces of the hordes

of irresponsibility and imbecility? This is not such a remote danger as the optimistic Eugenist might suppose.

The mating of the moron with a person of sound stock may, as Dr. Tredgold points out, gradually disseminate

this trait far and wide until it undermines the vigor and efficiency of an entire nation and an entire race. This

is no idle fancy. We must take it into account if we wish to escape the fate that has befallen so many

``It is, indeed, more than likely that the presence of this impairment in a mitigated form is responsible for no

little of the defective character, the diminution of mental and moral fiber at the present day,'' states Dr.

Tredgold.[2] Such populations, this distinguished authority might have added, form the veritable ``cultures''

not only for contagious physical diseases but for mental instability and irresponsibility also. They are

susceptible, exploitable, hysterical, nonresistant to external suggestion. Devoid of stamina, such folk

become mere units in a mob. ``The habit of crowdmaking is daily becoming a more serious menace to

civilization,'' writes Everett Dean Martin. ``Our society is becoming a veritable babel of gibbering

crowds.''[3] It would be only the incorrigible optimist who refused to see the integral relation between this

phenomenon and the indiscriminate breeding by which we recruit our large populations.

The danger of recruiting our numbers from the most ``fertile stocks'' is further emphasized when we recall

that in a democracy like that of the United States every man and woman is permitted a vote in the

government, and that it is the representatives of this grade of intelligence who may destroy our liberties, and

``It is a pathological worship of mere number,'' writes Alleyne Ireland, ``which has inspired all the

effortsthe primary, the direct election of Senators, the initiative, the recall and the referendum to cure

the evils of mob rule by increasing the size of the mob and extending its powers.''[4]

Equality of political power has thus been bestowed upon the lowest elements of our population. We must not

be surprised, therefore, at the spectacle of political scandal and graft, of the notorious and universally

ridiculed low level of intelligence and flagrant stupidity exhibited by our legislative bodies. The

All of these dangers and menaces are acutely realized by the Eugenists; it is to them that we are most

indebted for the proof that reckless spawning carries with it the seeds of destruction. But whereas the

Galtonians reveal themselves as unflinching in their investigation and in their exhibition of fact and

diagnoses of symptoms, they do not on the other hand show much power in suggesting practical and feasible

On its scientific side, Eugenics suggests the reestabilishment of the balance between the fertility of the ``fit''

and the ``unfit.'' The birthrate among the normal and healthier and finer stocks of humanity, is to be

increased by awakening among the ``fit'' the realization of the dangers of a lessened birthrate in proportion

to the reckless breeding among the ``unfit.'' By education, by persuasion, by appeals to racial ethics and

religious motives, the ardent Eugenist hopes to increase the fertility of the ``fit.'' Professor Pearson thinks that

it is especially necessary to awaken the hardiest stocks to this duty. These stocks, he says, are to be found

chiefly among the skilled artisan class, the intelligent working class. Here is a fine combination of health and

Professor Pearson and his school of biometrics here ignore or at least fail to record one of those significant

``correlations'' which form the basis of his method. The publications of the Eugenics Laboratory all tend to

show that a high rate of fertility is correlated with extreme poverty, recklessness, deficiency and delinquency;

similarly, that among the more intelligent, this rate of fertility decreases. But the scientific Eugenists fail to

recognize that this restraint of fecundity is due to a deliberate foresight and is a conscious effort to elevate

standards of living for the family and the children of the responsibleand possibly more selfishsections of

the community. The appeal to enter again into competitive childbearing, for the benefit of the nation or the

Pearson has done invaluable work in pointing out the fallacies and the false conclusions of the ordinary

statisticians. But when he attempts to show by the methods of biometrics that not only the first child but also

the second, are especially liable to suffer from transmissible pathological defects, such as insanity, criminality

and tuberculosis, he fails to recognize that this tendency is counterbalanced by the high mortality rate among

later children. If first and second children reveal a greater percentage of heritable defect, it is because the later

born children are less liable to survive the conditions produced by a large family.

In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of ``fit'' and ``unfit.'' Who is to

decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feebleminded should, indeed, not only

be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative

Eugenists one cannot ignore the distinct middleclass bias that prevails. As that penetrating critic, F. W.

Stella Browne, has said in another connection, ``The Eugenics Education Society has among its numbers

many most openminded and truly progressive individuals but the official policy it has pursued for years has

been inspired by class bias and sex bias. The society laments with increasing vehemence the multiplication

of the less fortunate classes at a more rapid rate than the possessors of leisure and opportunity. (I do not think

it relevant here to discuss whether the innate superiority of endowment in the governing class really is so

overwhelming as to justify the Eugenics Education Society's peculiar use of the terms `fit' and `unfit'!) Yet it

has persistently refused to give any help toward extending the knowledge of contraceptives to the exploited

classes. Similarly, though the Eugenics Review, the organ of the society, frequently laments the `selfishness'

of the refusal of maternity by healthy and educated women of the professional classes, I have yet to learn that

it has made any official pronouncement on the English illegitimacy laws or any organized effort toward

This peculiarly Victorian reticence may be inherited from the founder of Eugenics. Galton declared that the

``Bohemian'' element in the AngloSaxon race is destined to perish, and ``the sooner it goes, the happier for

mankind.'' The trouble with any effort of trying to divide humanity into the ``fit'' and the ``unfit,'' is that we

do not want, as H. G. Wells recently pointed out,[5] to breed for uniformity but for variety. ``We want

statesmen and poets and musicians and philosophers and strong men and delicate men and brave men. The

qualities of one would be the weaknesses of the other.'' We want, most of all, genius.

Proscription on Galtonian lines would tend to eliminate many of the great geniuses of the world who were not

only ``Bohemian,'' but actually and pathologically abnormalmen like Rousseau, Dostoevsky, Chopin, Poe,

Schumann, Nietzsche, Comte, Guy de Maupassant,and how many others? But such considerations should

not lead us into error of concluding that such men were geniuses merely because they were pathological

specimens, and that the only way to produce a genius is to breed disease and defect. It only emphasizes the

These limitations are more strikingly shown in the types of socalled ``eugenic'' legislation passed or

proposed by certain enthusiasts. Regulation, compulsion and prohibitions affected and enacted by political

bodies are the surest methods of driving the whole problem underground. As Havelock Ellis has pointed

out, the absurdity and even hopelessness of effecting Eugenic improvement by placing on the statute books

prohibitions of legal matrimony to certain classes of people, reveal the weakness of those Eugenists who

minimize or undervalue the importance of environment as a determining factor. They affirm that heredity is

everything and environment nothing, yet forget that it is precisely those who are most universally subject to

bad environment who procreate most copiously, most recklessly and most disastrously. Such marriage laws

are based for the most part on the infantile assumption that procreation is absolutely dependent upon the

marriage ceremony, an assumption usually coupled with the complementary one that the only purpose in

marriage is procreation. Yet it is a fact so obvious that it is hardly worth stating that the most fertile classes

who indulge in the most dysgenic type of procreatingthe feeblemindedare almost totally unaffected by

As for the sterilization of habitual criminals, not merely must we know more of heredity and genetics in

general, but also acquire more certainty of the justice of our laws and the honesty of their administration

before we can make rulings of fitness or unfitness merely upon the basis of a respect for law. On this point

the eminent William Bateson writes:[6] ``Criminals are often feebleminded, but as regards those that are

not, the fact that a man is for the purposes of Society classified as a criminal, tells me little as to his value,

still less as to the possible value of his offspring. It is a fault inherent in criminal jurisprudence, based on

nonbiological data, that the law must needs take the nature of the offenses rather than that of the offenders

as the basis of classification. A change in the right direction has begun, but the problem is difficult and

progress will be very slow....We all know of persons convicted, perhaps even habitually, whom the world

could ill spare. Therefore I hesitate to proscribe the criminal. Proscription...is a weapon with a very nasty

recoil. Might not some with equal cogency proscribe army contractors and their accomplices, the newspaper

patriots? The crimes of the prison population are petty offenses by comparison, and the significance we attach

to them is a survival of other days. Felonies may be great events, locally, but they do not induce

catastrophies. The proclivities of the warmakers are infinitely more dangerous than those of the aberrant

beings whom from time to time the law may dub as criminal. Consistent and potentous selfishness, combined

with dulness of imagination is probably just as transmissible as want of self control, though destitute of the

amiable qualities not rarely associated with the genetic composition of persons of unstable mind.''

In this connection, we should note another type of ``respectable'' criminality noted by Havelock Ellis: ``If

those persons who raise the cry of `racesuicide' in face of the decline of the birthrate really had the

knowledge and the intelligence to realize the manifold evils which they are invoking, they would deserve to

Our debt to the science of Eugenics is great in that it directs our attention to the biological nature of

humanity. Yet there is too great a tendency among the thinkers of this school, to restrict their ideas of sex to

its expression as a purely procreative function. Compulsory legislation which would make the inevitably

futile attempt to prohibit one of the most beneficent and necessary of human expressions, or regulate it into

the channels of preconceived philosophies, would reduce us to the unpleasant days predicted by William

``Priests in black gowns will be walking their rounds And binding with briars our joys and desires.''

Eugenics is chiefly valuable in its negative aspects. It is ``negative Eugenics'' that has studied the histories of

such families as the Jukeses and the Kallikaks, that has pointed out the network of imbecility and

feeblemindedness that has been sedulously spread through all strata of society. On its socalled positive or

constructive side, it fails to awaken any permanent interest. ``Constructive'' Eugenics aims to arouse the

enthusiasm or the interest of the people in the welfare of the world fifteen or twenty generations in the future.

On its negative side it shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever

increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at allthat the

wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human

While it is necessary to point out the importance of ``heredity'' as a determining factor in human life, it is

fatal to elevate it to the position of an absolute. As with environment, the concept of heredity derives its value

and its meaning only in so far as it is embodied and made concrete in generations of living organisms.

Environment and heredity are not antagonistic. Our problem is not that of ``Nature vs. Nurture,'' but rather of

Nature x Nurture, of heredity multiplied by environment, if we may express it thus. The Eugenist who

overlooks the importance of environment as a determining factor in human life, is as shortsighted as the

Socialist who neglects the biological nature of man. We cannot disentangle these two forces, except in theory.

To the child in the womb, said Samuel Butler, the mother is ``environment.'' She is, of course, likewise

``heredity.'' The age old discussion of ``Nature vs. Nurture'' has been threshed out time after time, usually

fruitlessly, because of a failure to recognize the indivisibility of these biological factors. The opposition or

antagonism between them is an artificial and academic one, having no basis in the living organism.

The great principle of Birth Control offers the means whereby the individual may adapt himself to and even

control the forces of environment and heredity. Entirely apart from its Malthusian aspect or that of the

population question, Birth Control must be recognized, as the NeoMalthusians pointed out long ago, not

``merely as the key of the social position,'' and the only possible and practical method of human generation,

but as the very pivot of civilization. Birth Control which has been criticized as negative and destructive, is

really the greatest and most truly eugenic method, and its adoption as part of the program of Eugenics would

immediately give a concrete and realistic power to that science. As a matter of fact, Birth Control has been

accepted by the most clear thinking and far seeing of the Eugenists themselves as the most constructive and

[1] Galton. Essays in Eugenics, p. 43. [2] Eugenics Review, Vol. XIII, p. 349. [3] Cf. Martin, The Behavior

of Crowds, p. 6. [4] Cf. Democracy and the Human Equation. E. P. Dutton Co., 1921. [5] Cf. The Salvaging

of Civilization. [6] Common Sense in Racial Problems. By W. Bateson, M. A. A., F. R. S. [7] Among these

are Dean W. R. Inge, Professor J. Arthur Thomson, Dr. Havelock Ellis, Professor William Bateson, Major

Orthodox opposition to Birth Control is formulated in the official protest of the National Council of Catholic

Women against the resolution passed by the New York State Federation of Women's Clubs which favored the

removal of all obstacles to the spread of information regarding practical methods of Birth Control. The

Catholic statement completely embodies traditional opposition to Birth Control. It affords a striking contrast

by which we may clarify and justify the ethical necessity for this new instrument of civilization as the most

effective basis for practical and scientific morality. ``The authorities at Rome have again and again declared

that all positive methods of this nature are immoral and forbidden,'' states the National Council of Catholic

Women. ``There is no question of the lawfulness of birth restriction through abstinence from the relations

which result in conception. The immorality of Birth Control as it is practised and commonly understood,

consists in the evils of the particular method employed. These are all contrary to the moral law because they

are unnatural, being a perversion of a natural function. Human faculties are used in such a way as to frustrate

the natural end for which these faculties were created. This is always intrinsically wrongas wrong as lying

and blasphemy. No supposed beneficial consequence can make good a practice which is, in itself, immoral....

``The evil results of the practice of Birth Control are numerous. Attention will be called here to only three.

The first is the degradation of the marital relation itself, since the husband and wife who indulge in any form

of this practice come to have a lower idea of married life. They cannot help coming to regard each other to a

great extent as mutual instruments of sensual gratification, rather than as cooperators with the Creating in

bringing children into the world. This consideration may be subtle but it undoubtedly represents the facts.

``In the second place, the deliberate restriction of the family through these immoral practices deliberately

weakens selfcontrol and the capacity for selfdenial, and increases the love of ease and luxury. The best

indication of this is that the small family is much more prevalent in the classes that are comfortable and

welltodo than among those whose material advantages are moderate or small. The theory of the advocates

of Birth Control is that those parents who are comfortably situated should have a large number of children

(SIC!) while the poor should restrict their offspring to a much smaller number. This theory does not work, for

the reason that each married couple have their own idea of what constitutes unreasonable hardship in the

matter of bearing and rearing children. A large proportion of the parents who are addicted to Birth Control

practices are sufficiently provided with worldly goods to be free from apprehension on the economic side;

nevertheless, they have small families because they are disinclined to undertake the other burdens involved in

bringing up a more numerous family. A practice which tends to produce such exaggerated notions of what

constitutes hardship, which leads men and women to cherish such a degree of ease, makes inevitably for

inefficiency, a decline in the capacity to endure and to achieve, and for a general social decadence.

``Finally, Birth Control leads sooner or later to a decline in population....'' (The case of France is instanced.)

But it is essentially the moral question that alarms the Catholic women, for the statement concludes: ``The

further effect of such proposed legislation will inevitably be a lowering both of public and private morals.

What the fathers of this country termed indecent and forbade the mails to carry, will, if such legislation is

carried through, be legally decent. The purveyors of sexual license and immorality will have the opportunity

to send almost anything they care to write through the mails on the plea that it is sex information. Not only

the married but also the unmarried will be thus affected; the ideals of the young contaminated and lowered.

``The proper attitude of Catholics...is clear. They should watch and oppose all attempts in state legislatures

and in Congress to repeal the laws which now prohibit the dissemination of information concerning Birth

Control. Such information will be spread only too rapidly despite existing laws. To repeal these would greatly

The Catholic position has been stated in an even more extreme form by Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes of the

archdiocese of New York. In a ``Christmas Pastoral'' this dignitary even went to the extent of declaring that

``even though some little angels in the flesh, through the physical or mental deformities of their parents, may

appear to human eyes hideous, misshapen, a blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of this Christian

thought that under and within such visible malformation, lives an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for

With the type of moral philosophy expressed in this utterance, we need not argue. It is based upon traditional

ideas that have had the practical effect of making this world a vale of tears. Fortunately such words carry no

weight with those who can bring free and keen as well as noble minds to the consideration of the matter. To

them the idealism of such an utterance appears crude and cruel. The menace to civilization of such orthodoxy,

if it be orthodoxy, lies in the fact that its powerful exponents may be fore a time successful not merely in

influencing the conduct of their adherents but in checking freedom of thought and discussion. To this, with

all the vehemence of emphasis at our command, we object. From what Archbishop Hayes believes

concerning the future blessedness in Heaven of the souls of those who are born into this world as hideous and

misshapen beings he has a right to seek such consolation as may be obtained; but we who are trying to better

the conditions of this world believe that a healthy, happy human race is more in keeping with the laws of

God, than disease, misery and poverty perpetuating itself generation after generation. Furthermore, while

conceding to Catholic or other churchmen full freedom to preach their own doctrines, whether of theology or

morals, nevertheless when they attempt to carry these ideas into legislative acts and force their opinions and

codes upon the nonCatholics, we consider such action an interference with the principles of democracy and

Religious propaganda against Birth Control is crammed with contradiction and fallacy. It refutes itself. Yet it

brings the opposing views into vivid contrast. In stating these differences we should make clear that

advocates of Birth Control are not seeking to attack the Catholic church. We quarrel with that church,

however, when it seeks to assume authority over nonCatholics and to dub their behavior immoral because

they do not conform to the dictatorship of Rome. The question of bearing and rearing children we hold is the

concern of the mother and the potential mother. If she delegates the responsibility, the ethical education, to an

external authority, that is her affair. We object, however, to the State or the Church which appoints itself as

arbiter and dictator in this sphere and attempts to force unwilling women into compulsory maternity.

When Catholics declare that ``The authorities at Rome have again and again declared that all positive

methods of this nature are immoral and forbidden,'' they do so upon the assumption that morality consists in

conforming to laws laid down and enforced by external authority, in submission to decrees and dicta imposed

from without. In this case, they decide in a wholesale manner the conduct of millions, demanding of them not

the intelligent exercise of their own individual judgment and discrimination, but unquestioning submission

and conformity to dogma. The Church thus takes the place of allpowerful parents, and demands of its

children merely that they should obey. In my belief such a philosophy hampers the development of individual

intelligence. Morality then becomes a more or less successful attempt to conform to a code, instead of an

attempt to bring reason and intelligence to bear upon the solution of each individual human problem.

But, we read on, Birth Control methods are not merely contrary to ``moral law,'' but forbidden because they

are ``unnatural,'' being ``the perversion of a natural function.'' This, of course, is the weakest link in the whole

chain. Yet ``there is no question of the lawfulness of birth restriction through abstinence''as though

abstinence itself were not unnatural! For more than a thousand years the Church was occupied with the

problem of imposing abstinence on its priesthood, its most educated and trained body of men, educated to

look upon asceticism as the finest ideal; it took one thousand years to convince the Catholic priesthood that

abstinence was ``natural'' or practicable.[3] Nevertheless, there is still this talk of abstinence, selfcontrol,

and selfdenial, almost in the same breath with the condemnation of Birth Control as ``unnatural.''

If it is our duty to act as ``cooperators with the Creator'' to bring children into the world, it is difficult to say at

what point our behavior is ``unnatural.'' If it is immoral and ``unnatural'' to prevent an unwanted life from

coming into existence, is it not immoral and ``unnatural'' to remain unmarried from the age of puberty? Such

casuistry is unconvincing and feeble. We need only point out that rational intelligence is also a ``natural''

function, and that it is as imperative for us to use the faculties of judgment, criticism, discrimination of

choice, selection and control, all the faculties of the intelligence, as it is to use those of reproduction. It is

certainly dangerous ``to frustrate the natural ends for which these faculties were created.'' This also, is always

intrinsically wrong as wrong as lying and blasphemyand infinitely more devastating. Intelligence is as

natural to us as any other faculty, and it is fatal to moral development and growth to refuse to use it and to

delegate to others the solution of our individual problems. The evil will not be that one's conduct is divergent

from current and conventional moral codes. There may be every outward evidence of conformity, but this

agreement may be arrived at, by the restriction and suppression of subjective desires, and the more or less

successful attempt at mere conformity. Such ``morality'' would conceal an inner conflict. The fruits of this

conflict would be neurosis and hysteria on the one hand; or concealed gratification of suppressed desires on

the other, with a resultant hypocrisy and cant. True morality cannot be based on conformity. There must be

To object to these traditional and churchly ideas does not by any means imply that the doctrine of Birth

Control is antiChristian. On the contrary, it may be profoundly in accordance with the Sermon on the

Mount. One of the greatest living theologians and most penetrating students of the problems of civilization is

of this opinion. In an address delivered before the Eugenics Education Society of London,[4] William Ralph

Inge, the Very Reverend Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, pointed out that the doctrine of Birth Control

``We should be ready to give up all our theories,'' he asserted, ``if science proved that we were on the wrong

lines. And we can understand, though we profoundly disagree with, those who oppose us on the grounds of

authority....We know where we are with a man who says, `Birth Control is forbidden by God; we prefer

poverty, unemployment, war, the physical, intellectual and moral degeneration of the people, and a high

deathrate to any interference with the universal command to be fruitful and multiply'; but we have no

patience with those who say that we can have unrestricted and unregulated propagation without those

consequences. It is a great part of our work to press home to the public mind the alternative that lies before

us. Either rational selection must take the place of the natural selection which the modern State will not allow

to act, or we must go on deteriorating. When we can convince the public of this, the opposition of organized

religion will soon collapse or become ineffective.'' Dean Inge effectively answers those who have objected to

the methods of Birth Control as ``immoral'' and in contradiction and inimical to the teachings of Christ.

Incidentally he claims that those who are not blinded by prejudices recognize that ``Christianity aims at

saving the soulthe personality, the nature, of man, not his body or his environment. According to

Christianity, a man is saved, not by what he has, or knows, or does, but by what he is. It treats all the

apparatus of life with a disdain as great as that of the biologist; so long as a man is inwardly healthy, it cares

very little whether he is rich or poor, learned or simple, and even whether he is happy, or unhappy. It attaches

no importance to quantitative measurements of any kind. The Christian does not gloat over favorable trade

statistics, nor congratulate himself on the disparity between the number of births and deaths. For him...the test

of the welfare of a country is the quality of human beings whom it produces. Quality is everything, quantity

is nothing. And besides this, the Christian conception of a kingdom of God upon the earth teaches us to turn

our eyes to the future, and to think of the welfare of posterity as a thing which concerns us as much as that of

our own generation. This welfare, as conceived by Christianity, is of course something different from

external prosperity; it is to be the victory of intrinsic worth and healthiness over all the false ideals and deep

``It is not political religion with which I am concerned,'' Dean Inge explained, ``but the convictions of really

religious persons; and I do not think that we need despair of converting them to our views.''

Dean Inge believes Birth Control is an essential part of Eugenics, and an essential part of Christian morality.

On this point he asserts: ``We do wish to remind our orthodox and conservative friends that the Sermon on

the Mount contains some admirably clear and unmistakable eugenic precepts. `Do men gather grapes of

thorns, or figs of thistles? A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither can a good tree bring forth evil

fruit. Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.' We wish to apply

these words not only to the actions of individuals, which spring from their characters, but to the character of

individuals, which spring from their inherited qualities. This extension of the scope of the maxim seems to

me quite legitimate. Men do not gather grapes of thorns. As our proverb says, you cannot make a silk purse

out of a sow's ear. If we believe this, and do not act upon it by trying to move public opinion towards giving

social reform, education and religion a better material to work upon, we are sinning against the light, and not

As long as sexual activity is regarded in a dualistic and contradictory light,in which it is revealed either as

the instrument by which men and women ``cooperate with the Creator'' to bring children into the world, on

the one hand; and on the other, as the sinful instrument of selfgratification, lust and sensuality, there is

bound to be an endless conflict in human conduct, producing ever increasing misery, pain and injustice. In

crystallizing and codifying this contradiction, the Church not only solidified its own power over men but

reduced women to the most abject and prostrate slavery. It was essentially a morality that would not ``work.''

The sex instinct in the human race is too strong to be bound by the dictates of any church. The church's

failure, its century after century of failure, is now evident on every side: for, having convinced men and

women that only in its baldly propagative phase is sexual expression legitimate, the teachings of the Church

have driven sex underground, into secret channels, strengthened the conspiracy of silence, concentrated

men's thoughts upon the ``lusts of the body,'' have sown, cultivated and reaped a crop of bodily and mental

diseases, and developed a society congenitally and almost hopelessly unbalanced. How is any progress to be

made, how is any human expression or education possible when women and men are taught to combat and

Humanity, we are glad to realize, is rapidly freeing itself from this ``morality'' imposed upon it by its

selfappointed and self perpetuating masters. From a hundred different points the imposing edifice of this

``morality'' has been and is being attacked. Sincere and thoughtful defenders and exponents of the teachings

of Christ now acknowledge the falsity of the traditional codes and their malignant influence upon the moral

Ecclesiastical opposition to Birth Control on the part of certain representatives of the Protestant churches,

based usually on quotations from the Bible, is equally invalid, and for the same reason. The attitude of the

more intelligent and enlightened clergy has been well and succinctly expressed by Dean Inge, who, referring

to the ethics of Birth Control, writes: ``THIS IS EMPHATICALLY A MATTER IN WHICH EVERY MAN

OTHERS.'' We must not neglect the important fact that it is not merely in the practical results of such a

decision, not in the small number of children, not even in the healthier and better cared for children, not in the

possibility of elevating the living conditions of the individual family, that the ethical value of Birth Control

alone lies. Precisely because the practice of Birth Control does demand the exercise of decision, the making

of choice, the use of the reasoning powers, is it an instrument of moral education as well as of hygienic and

racial advance. It awakens the attention of parents to their potential children. It forces upon the individual

consciousness the question of the standards of living. In a profound manner it protects and reasserts the

Psychology and the outlook of modern life are stressing the growth of independent responsibility and

discrimination as the true basis of ethics. The old traditional morality, with its train of vice, disease,

promiscuity and prostitution, is in reality dying out, killing itself off because it is too irresponsible and too

dangerous to individual and social wellbeing. The transition from the old to the new, like all fundamental

changes, is fraught with many dangers. But it is a revolution that cannot be stopped.

The smaller family, with its lower infant mortality rate, is, in more definite and concrete manner than many

actions outwardly deemed ``moral,'' the expression of moral judgment and responsibility. It is the assertion of

a standard of living, inspired by the wish to obtain a fuller and more expressive life for the children than the

parents have enjoyed. If the morality or immorality of any course of conduct is to be determined by the

motives which inspire it, there is evidently at the present day no higher morality than the intelligent practice

The immorality of many who practise Birth Control lies in not daring to preach what they practise. What is

the secret of the hypocrisy of the welltodo, who are willing to contribute generously to charities and

philanthropies, who spend thousands annually in the upkeep and sustenance of the delinquent, the defective

and the dependent; and yet join the conspiracy of silence that prevents the poorer classes from learning how

to improve their conditions, and elevate their standards of living? It is as though they were to cry: ``We'll give

you anything except the thing you ask forthe means whereby you may become responsible and selfreliant

The brunt of this injustice falls on women, because the old traditional morality is the invention of men. ``No

religion, no physical or moral code,'' wrote the clearsighted George Drysdale, ``proposed by one sex for the

other, can be really suitable. Each must work out its laws for itself in every department of life.'' In the moral

code developed by the Church, women have been so degraded that they have been habituated to look upon

themselves through the eyes of men. Very imperfectly have women developed their own self consciousness,

the realization of their tremendous and supreme position in civilization. Women can develop this power only

in one way; by the exercise of responsibility, by the exercise of judgment, reason or discrimination. They

need ask for no ``rights.'' They need only assert power. Only by the exercise of selfguidance and intelligent

selfdirection can that inalienable, supreme, pivotal power be expressed. More than ever in history women

need to realize that nothing can ever come to us from another. Everything we attain we must owe to

ourselves. Our own spirit must vitalize it. Our own heart must feel it. For we are not passive machines. We

are not to be lectured, guided and molded this way or that. We are alive and intelligent, we women, no less

than men, and we must awaken to the essential realization that we are living beings, endowed with will,

choice, comprehension, and that every step in life must be taken at our own initiative.

Moral and sexual balance in civilization will only be established by the assertion and expression of power on

the part of women. This power will not be found in any futile seeking for economic independence or in the

aping of men in industrial and business pursuits, nor by joining battle for the socalled ``single standard.''

Woman's power can only be expressed and make itself felt when she refuses the task of bringing unwanted

children into the world to be exploited in industry and slaughtered in wars. When we refuse to produce

battalions of babies to be exploited; when we declare to the nation; ``Show us that the best possible chance in

life is given to every child now brought into the world, before you cry for more! At present our children are a

glut on the market. You hold infant life cheap. Help us to make the world a fit place for children. When you

have done this, we will bear you children,then we shall be true women.'' The new morality will express

``With the realization of the moral responsibility of women,'' writes Havelock Ellis, ``the natural relations of

life spring back to their due biological adjustment. Motherhood is restored to its natural sacredness. It

becomes the concern of the woman herself, and not of society nor any individual, to determine the conditions

Moreover, woman shall further assert her power by refusing to remain the passive instrument of sensual

selfgratification on the part of men. Birth Control, in philosophy and practice, is the destroyer of that

dualism of the old sexual code. It denies that the sole purpose of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies

that sex should be reduced to the level of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the

instrument of its satisfaction. In increasing and differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex

into another sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of individual and human

expression. Man will gain in this no less than woman; for in the ageold enslavement of woman he has

enslaved himself; and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will experience the joys of a new and

On this great fundamental and pivotal point new light has been thrown by Lord Bertrand Dawson, the

physician of the King of England. In the remarkable and epochmaking address at the Birmingham Church

Congress (referred to in my introduction), he spoke of the supreme morality of the mutual and reciprocal joy

in the most intimate relation between man and woman. Without this reciprocity there can be no civilization

worthy of the name. Lord Dawson suggested that there should be added to the clauses of marriage in the

Prayer Book ``the complete realization of the love of this man and this woman one for another,'' and in

support of his contention declared that sex love between husband and wifeapart from parenthoodwas

something to prize and cherish for its own sake. The Lambeth Conference, he remarked, ``envisaged a love

invertebrate and joyless,'' whereas, in his view, natural passion in wedlock was not a thing to be ashamed of

or unduly repressed. The pronouncement of the Church of England, as set forth in Resolution 68 of the

Lambeth Conference seems to imply condemnation of sex love as such, and to imply sanction of sex love

``In opposition to the teaching which under the name of science and religion encourages married people in

the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be

regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which

marriage exists namely, the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is

the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful selfcontrol.''

``Sex love has, apart from parenthood, a purport of its own. It is something to prize and to cherish for its own

sake. It is an essential part of health and happiness in marriage. And now, if you will allow me, I will carry

this argument a step further. If sexual union is a gift of God it is worth learning how to use it. Within its own

sphere it should be cultivated so as to bring physical satisfaction to both, not merely to one....The real

problems before us are those of sex love and child love; and by sex love I mean that love which involves

intercourse or the desire for such. It is necessary to my argument to emphasize that sex love is one of the

dominating forces of the world. Not only does history show the destinies of nations and dynasties determined

by its swaybut here in our everyday life we see its influence, direct or indirect, forceful and ubiquitous

beyond aught else. Any statesmanlike view, therefore, will recognize that here we have an instinct so

fundamental, so imperious, that its influence is a fact which has to be accepted; suppress it you cannot. You

may guide it into healthy channels, but an outlet it will have, and if that outlet is inadequate and unduly

``The attainment of mutual and reciprocal joy in their relations constitutes a firm bond between two people,

and makes for durability of the marriage tie. Reciprocity in sex love is the physical counterpart of sympathy.

More marriages fail from inadequate and clumsy sex love than from too much sex love. The lack of proper

understanding is in no small measure responsible for the unfulfilment of connubial happiness, and every

degree of discontent and unhappiness may, from this cause, occur, leading to rupture of the marriage bond

itself. How often do medical men have to deal with these difficulties, and how fortunate if such difficulties

are disclosed early enough in married life to be rectified. Otherwise how tragic may be their consequences,

and many a case in the Divorce Court has thus had its origin. To the foregoing contentions, it might be

objected, you are encouraging passion. My reply would be, passion is a worthy possessionmost men, who

are any good, are capable of passion. You all enjoy ardent and passionate love in art and literature. Why not

give it a place in real life? Why some people look askance at passion is because they are confusing it with

sensuality. Sex love without passion is a poor, lifeless thing. Sensuality, on the other hand, is on a level with

gluttonya physical excessdetached from sentiment, chivalry, or tenderness. It is just as important to give

sex love its place as to avoid its overemphasis. Its real and effective restraints are those imposed by a loving

and sympathetic companionship, by the privileges of parenthood, the exacting claims of career and that civic

sense which prompts men to do social service. Now that the revision of the Prayer Book is receiving

consideration, I should like to suggest with great respect an addition made to the objects of marriage in the

Marriage Service, in these terms, ``The complete realization of the love of this man and this woman, the one

Turning to the specific problem of Birth Control, Lord Dawson declared, ``that Birth Control is here to stay.

It is an established fact, and for good or evil has to be accepted. Although the extent of its application can be

and is being modified, no denunciations will abolish it. Despite the influence and condemnations of the

Church, it has been practised in France for well over half a century, and in Belgium and other Roman

Catholic countries is extending. And if the Roman Catholic Church, with its compact organization, its power

of authority, and its disciplines, cannot check this procedure, it is not likely that Protestant Churches will be

able to do so, for Protestant religions depend for their strength on the conviction and esteem they establish in

the heads and hearts of their people. The reasons which lead parents to limit their offspring are sometimes

A report of the Fabian Society [5] on the morality of Birth Control, based upon a census conducted under the

chairmanship of Sidney Webb, concludes: ``These factswhich we are bound to face whether we like them

or notwill appear in different lights to different people. In some quarters it seems to be sufficient to dismiss

them with moral indignation, real or simulated. Such a judgment appears both irrelevant and futile....If a

course of conduct is habitually and deliberately pursued by vast multitudes of otherwise wellconducted

people, forming probably a majority of the whole educated class of the nation, we must assume that it does

not conflict with their actual code of morality. They may be intellectually mistaken, but they are not doing

The moral justification and ethical necessity of Birth Control need not be empirically based upon the mere

approval of experience and custom. Its morality is more profound. Birth Control is an ethical necessity for

humanity today because it places in our hands a new instrument of selfexpression and selfrealization. It

gives us control over one of the primordial forces of nature, to which in the past the majority of mankind have

been enslaved, and by which it has been cheapened and debased. It arouses us to the possibility of newer and

greater freedom. It develops the power, the responsibility and intelligence to use this freedom in living a

liberated and abundant life. It permits us to enjoy this liberty without danger of infringing upon the similar

liberty of our fellow men, or of injuring and curtailing the freedom of the next generation. It shows us that we

need not seek in the amassing of worldly wealth, not in the illusion of some extraterrestrial Heaven or

earthly Utopia of a remote future the road to human development. The Kingdom of Heaven is in a very

definite sense within us. Not by leaving our body and our fundamental humanity behind us, not by aiming to

be anything but what we are, shall we become ennobled or immortal. By knowing ourselves, by expressing

ourselves, by realizing ourselves more completely than has ever before been possible, not only shall we attain

the kingdom ourselves but we shall hand on the torch of life undimmed to our children and the children of

[1] Quoted in the National Catholic Welfare Council Bulletin: Vol. II, No. 5, p. 21 (January, 1921). [2]

Quoted in daily press, December 19, 1921. [3] H. C. Lea: History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia,

``Science is the great instrument of social change,'' wrote A. J. Balfour in 1908; ``all the greater because its

object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of

religious and political strife, is the most vital of all revolutions which have marked the development of

modern civilization.'' The Birth Control movement has allied itself with science, and no small part of its

present propaganda is to awaken the interest of scientists to the pivotal importance to civilization of this

instrument. Only with the aid of science is it possible to perfect a practical method that may be universally

taught. As Dean Inge recently admitted: ``We should be ready to give up all our theories if science proved

One of the principal aims of the American Birth Control League has been to awaken the interest of scientific

investigators and to point out the rich field for original research opened up by this problem. The correlation of

reckless breeding with defective and delinquent strains, has not, strangely enough, been subjected to close

scientific scrutiny, nor has the present biological unbalance been traced to its root. This is a crying necessity

Secondary only to the response of women themselves is the awakened interest of scientists, statisticians, and

research workers in every field. If the clergy and the defenders of traditional morality have opposed the

movement for Birth Control, the response of enlightened scientists and physicians has been one of the most

Recent developments in the realm of science,in psychology, in physiology, in chemistry and physicsall

tend to emphasize the immediate necessity for human control over the great forces of nature. The new ideas

published by contemporary science are of the utmost fascination and illumination even to the layman. They

perform the invaluable task of making us look at life in a new light, of searching close at hand for the solution

to heretofore closed mysteries of life. In this brief chapter, I can touch these ideas only as they have proved

valuable to me. Professor Soddy's ``Science and Life'' is one of the most inspiring of recent publications in

this field; for this great authority shows us how closely bound up is science with the whole of Society, how

As an example: a whole literature has sprung into being around the glands, the most striking being ``The Sex

Complex'' by Blair Bell. This author advances the idea of the glandular system as an integral whole, the

glands forming a unity which might be termed the generative system. Thus is reasserted the radical

importance of sexual health to every individual. The whole tendency of modern physiology and psychology,

in a word, seems gradually coming to the truth that seemed intuitively to be revealed to that great woman,

Olive Schreiner, who, in ``Woman and Labor'' wrote: ``...Noble is the function of physical reproduction of

humanity by the union of man and woman. Rightly viewed, that union has in it latent, other and even higher

forms of creative energy and lifedispensing power, and...its history on earth has only begun; as the first wild

rose when it hung from its stem with its center of stamens and pistils and its single whorl of pale petals had

only begun its course, and was destined, as the ages passed, to develop stamen upon stamen and petal upon

``And it would indeed almost seem, that, on the path toward the higher development of sexual life on earth,

as man has so often had to lead in other paths, that here it is perhaps woman, by reason of those very sexual

conditions which in the past have crushed and trammeled her, who is bound to lead the way and man to

follow. So that it may be at last that sexual lovethat tired angel who through the ages has presided over the

march of humanity, with distraught eyes, and feathershafts broken and wings drabbled in the mires of lust

and greed, and golden locks caked over with the dust of injustice and oppressiontill those looking at him

have sometimes cried in terror, `He is the Evil and not the Good of life': and have sought if it were not

possible, to exterminate himshall yet, at last, bathed from the mire and dust of ages in the streams of

friendship and freedom, leap upwards, with white wings spread, resplendent in the sunshine of a distant

Today science is verifying the truth of this inspiring vision. Certain fundamental truths concerning the basic

facts of Nature and humanity especially impress us. A rapid survey may indicate the main features of this

Mankind has gone forward by the capture and control of the forces of Nature. This upward struggle began

with the kindling of the first fire. The domestication of animal life marked another great step in the long

ascent. The capture of the great physical forces, the discovery of coal and mineral oil, of gas, steam and

electricity, and their adaptation to the everyday uses of mankind, wrought the greatest changes in the course

of civilization. With the discovery of radium and radioactivity, with the recognition of the vast stores of

physical energy concealed in the atom, humanity is now on the eve of a new conquest. But, on the other side,

humanity has been compelled to combat continuously those great forces of Nature which have opposed it at

every moment of this long indomitable march out of barbarism. Humanity has had to wage war against

insects, germs, bacteria, which have spread disease and epidemics and devastation. Humanity has had to

adapt itself to those natural forces it could not conquer but could only adroitly turn to its own ends.

Nevertheless, all along the line, in colonization, in agriculture, in medicine and in industry, mankind has

But lest the recognition of this victory lead us to selfsatisfaction and complacency, we should never forget

that this mastery consists to a great extent in a recognition of the power of those blind forces, and our adroit

control over them. It has been truly said that we attain no power over Nature until we learn natural laws and

The strength of the human race has been its ability not merely to subjugate the forces of Nature, but to adapt

itself to those it could not conquer. And even this subjugation, science tells us, has not resulted from any

attempt to suppress, prohibit, or eradicate these forces, but rather to transform blind and undirected energies

These great natural forces, science now asserts, are not all external. They are surely concealed within the

complex organism of the human being no less than outside of it. These inner forces are no less imperative, no

less driving and compelling than the external forces of Nature. As the old conception of the antagonism

between body and soul is broken down, as psychology becomes an ally of physiology and biology, and

biology joins hands with physics and chemistry, we are taught to see that there is a mysterious unity between

these inner and outer forces. They express themselves in accordance with the same structural, physical and

chemical laws. The development of civilization in the subjective world, in the sphere of behavior, conduct

and morality, has been precisely the gradual accumulation and popularization of methods which teach people

how to direct, transform and transmute the driving power of the great natural forces.

Psychology is now recognizing the forces concealed in the human organism. In the long process of adaptation

to social life, men have had to harness the wishes and desires born of these inner energies, the greatest and

most imperative of which are Sex and Hunger. From the beginning of time, men have been driven by Hunger

into a thousand activities. It is Hunger that has created ``the struggle for existence.'' Hunger has spurred men

to the discovery and invention of methods and ways of avoiding starvation, of storing and exchanging foods.

It has developed primitive barter into our contemporary Wall Streets. It has developed thrift and

economy,expedients whereby humanity avoids the lash of King Hunger. The true ``economic

But no less fundamental, no less imperative, no less ceaseless in its dynamic energy, has been the great force

of Sex. We do not yet know the intricate but certainly organic relationship between these two forces. It is

obvious that they oppose yet reinforce each other, driving, lashing, spurring mankind on to new conquests

or to certain ruin. Perhaps Hunger and Sex are merely opposite poles of a single great life force. In the past

we have made the mistake of separating them and attempting to study one of them without the other. Birth

Control emphasizes the need of reinvestigation and of knowledge of their integral relationship, and aims at

In the more recent past the effort has been made to control, civilize, and sublimate the great primordial

natural force of sex, mainly by futile efforts at prohibition, suppression, restraint, and extirpation. Its revenge,

as the psychoanalysts are showing us every day, has been great. Insanity, hysteria, neuroses, morbid fears and

compulsions, weaken and render useless and unhappy thousands of humans who are unconscious victims of

the attempt to pit individual powers against this great natural force. In the solution of the problem of sex, we

should bear in mind what the successful method of humanity has been in its conquest, or rather its control of

the great physical and chemical forces of the external world. Like all other energy, that of sex is

indestructible. By adaptation, control and conscious direction, we may transmute and sublimate it. Without

irreparable injury to ourselves we cannot attempt to eradicate it or extirpate it.

The study of atomic energy, the discovery of radioactivity, and the recognition of potential and latent

energies stored in inanimate matter, throw a brilliant illumination upon the whole problem of sex and the

inner energies of mankind. Speaking of the discovery of radium, Professor Soddy writes: ``Tracked to earth

the clew to a great secret for which a thousand telescopes might have swept the sky forever and in vain, lay in

a scrap of matter, dowered with something of the same inexhaustible radiance that hitherto has been the sole

prerogative of the distant stars and sun.'' Radium, this distinguished authority tells us, has clothed with its

Much as the atomic theory, with its revelations of the vast treasure house of radiant energy that lies all about

us, offers new hope in the material world, so the new psychology throws a new light upon human energies

and possibilities of individual expression. Social reformers, like those scientists of a bygone era who were

sweeping the skies with their telescopes, have likewise been seeking far and wide for the solution of our

social problems in remote and wholesale panaceas, whereas the true solution is close at hand,in the human

individual. Buried within each human being lies concealed a vast store of energy, which awaits release,

expression and sublimation. The individual may profitably be considered as the ``atom'' of society. And the

solution of the problems of society and of civilization will be brought about when we release the energies

now latent and undeveloped in the individual. Professor Edwin Grant Conklin expresses the problem in

another form; though his analogy, it seems to me, is open to serious criticism. ``The freedom of the individual

man,'' he writes,[1] ``is to that of society as the freedom of the single cell is to that of the human being. It is

this large freedom of society, rather than the freedom of the individual, which democracy offers to the world,

free societies, free states, free nations rather than absolutely free individuals. In all organisms and in all social

organizations, the freedom of the minor units must be limited in order that the larger unit may achieve a new

and greater freedom, and in social evolution the freedom of individuals must be merged more and more into

This analogy does not bear analysis. Restraint and constraint of individual expression, suppression of

individual freedom ``for the good of society'' has been practised from time immemorial; and its failure is all

too evident. There is no antagonism between the good of the individual and the good of society. The moment

civilization is wise enough to remove the constraints and prohibitions which now hinder the release of inner

energies, most of the larger evils of society will perish of inanition and malnutrition. Remove the moral

taboos that now bind the human body and spirit, free the individual from the slavery of tradition, remove the

chains of fear from men and women, above all answer their unceasing cries for knowledge that would make

possible their selfdirection and salvation, and in so doing, you best serve the interests of society at large.

Free, rational and self ruling personality would then take the place of selfmade slaves, who are the victims

both of external constraints and the playthings of the uncontrolled forces of their own instincts.

Science likewise illuminates the whole problem of genius. Hidden in the common stuff of humanity lies

buried this power of self expression. Modern science is teaching us that genius is not some mysterious gift

of the gods, some treasure conferred upon individuals chosen by chance. Nor is it, as Lombroso believed, the

result of a pathological and degenerate condition, allied to criminality and madness. Rather is it due to the

removal of physiological and psychological inhibitions and constraints which makes possible the release and

the channeling of the primordial inner energies of man into full and divine expression. The removal of these

inhibitions, so scientists assure us, makes possible more rapid and profound perceptions,so rapid indeed

that they seem to the ordinary human being, practically instantaneous, or intuitive. The qualities of genius are

not, therefore, qualities lacking in the common reservoir of humanity, but rather the unimpeded release and

direction of powers latent in all of us. This process of course is not necessarily conscious.

This view is substantiated by the opposite problem of feeble mindedness. Recent researches throw a new

light on this problem and the contrasting one of human genius. Mental defect and feeble mindedness are

conceived essentially as retardation, arrest of development, differing in degree so that the victim is either an

idiot, an imbecile, feebleminded or a moron, according to the relative period at which mental development

Scientific research into the functioning of the ductless glands and their secretions throws a new light on this

problem. Not long ago these glands were a complete enigma, owing to the fact that they are not provided with

excretory ducts. It has just recently been shown that these organs, such as the thyroid, the pituitary, the

suprarenal, the parathyroid and the reproductive glands, exercise an allpowerful influence upon the course

of individual development or deficiency. Gley, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of glandular action,

has asserted that ``the genesis and exercise of the higher faculties of men are conditioned by the purely

chemical action of the product of these secretions. Let psychologists consider these facts.''

These internal secretions or endocrines pass directly into the blood stream, and exercise a dominating power

over health and personality. Deficiency in the thyroid secretion, especially during the years of infancy and

early childhood, creates disorders of nutrition and inactivity of the nervous system. The particular form of

idiocy known as cretinism is the result of this deficiency, which produces an arrest of the development of the

brain cells. The other glands and their secretions likewise exercise the most profound influence upon

development, growth and assimilation. Most of these glands are of very small size, none of them larger than a

walnut, and somethe parathyroidsalmost microscopic. Nevertheless, they are essential to the proper

maintenance of life in the body, and no less organically related to mental and psychic development as well.

The reproductive glands, it should not be forgotten, belong to this group, and besides their ordinary products,

the germ and sperm cells (ova and spermatozoa) form HORMONES which circulate in the blood and effect

changes in the cells of distant parts of the body. Through these HORMONES the secondary sexual characters

are produced, including the many differences in the form and structure of the body which are the

characteristics of the sexes. Only in recent years has science discovered that these secondary sexual

characters are brought about by the agency of these internal secretions or hormones, passed from the

reproductive glands into the circulating blood. These socalled secondary characters which are the sign of

full and healthy development, are dependent, science tells us, upon the state of development of the

For a clear and illuminating account of the creative and dynamic power of the endocrine glands, the layman is

referred to a recently published book by Dr. Louis Berman.[2] This authority reveals anew how body and

soul are bound up together in a complex unity. Our spiritual and psychic difficulties cannot be solved until

we have mastered the knowledge of the wellsprings of our being. ``The chemistry of the soul! Magnificent

phrase!'' exclaims Dr. Berman. ``It's a long, long way to that goal. The exact formula is as yet far beyond our

``The internal secretions constitute and determine much of the inherited powers of the individual and their

development. They control physical and mental growth, and all the metabolic processes of fundamental

importance. They dominate all the vital functions of man during the three cycles of life. They cooperate in an

intimate relationship which may be compared to an interlocking directorate. A derangement of their

functions, causing an insufficiency of them, an excess, or an abnormality, upsets the entire equilibrium of the

body, with transforming effects upon the mind and the organs. In short, they control human nature, and

``Blood chemistry of our time is a marvel, undreamed of a generation ago. Also, these achievements are a

perfect example of the accomplished fact contradicting a prior prediction and criticism. For it was one of the

accepted dogmas of the nineteenth century that the phenomena of living could never be subjected to accurate

quantitative analysis.'' But the ethical dogmas of the past, no less than the scientific, may block the way to

Physiologically as well as psychologically the development of the human being, the sane mind in the sound

body, is absolutely dependent upon the functioning and exercise of all the organs in the body. The

``moralists'' who preach abstinence, selfdenial, and suppression are relegated by these findings of impartial

and disinterested science to the class of those educators of the past who taught that it was improper for young

ladies to indulge in sports and athletics and who produced generations of feeble, undeveloped invalids, bound

up by stays and addicted to swooning and hysterics. One need only go out on the street of any American city

today to be confronted with the victims of the cruel morality of selfdenial and ``sin.'' This fiendish

``morality'' is stamped upon those emaciated bodies, indelibly written in those emasculated, underdeveloped,

undernourished figures of men and women, in the nervous tension and unrelaxed muscles denoting the

ceaseless vigilance in restraining and suppressing the expression of natural impulses.

Birth Control is no negative philosophy concerned solely with the number of children brought into this world.

It is not merely a question of population. Primarily it is the instrument of liberation and of human

It points the way to a morality in which sexual expression and human development will not be in conflict

with the interest and wellbeing of the race nor of contemporary society at large. Not only is it the most

effective, in fact the only lever by which the value of the child can be raised to a civilized point; but it is

likewise the only method by which the life of the individual can be deepened and strengthened, by which an

inner peace and security and beauty may be substituted for the inner conflict that is at present so fatal to

Sublimation of the sexual instinct cannot take place by denying it expression, nor by reducing it to the plane

of the purely physiological. Sexual experience, to be of contributory value, must be integrated and

assimilated. Asceticism defeats its own purpose because it develops the obsession of licentious and obscene

thoughts, the victim alternating between temporary victory over ``sin'' and the remorse of defeat. But the

seeker of purely physical pleasure, the libertine or the average sensualist, is no less a pathological case, living

as onesided and unbalanced a life as the ascetic, for his conduct is likewise based on ignorance and lack of

understanding. In seeking pleasure without the exercise of responsibility, in trying to get something for

In still another field science and scientific method now emphasize the pivotal importance of Birth Control.

The BinetSimon intelligence tests which have been developed, expanded, and applied to large groups of

children and adults present positive statistical data concerning the mental equipment of the type of children

brought into the world under the influence of indiscriminate fecundity and of those fortunate children who

have been brought into the world because they are wanted, the children of conscious, voluntary procreation,

well nourished, properly clothed, the recipients of all that proper care and love can accomplish.

In considering the data furnished by these intelligence tests we should remember several factors that should

be taken into consideration. Irrespective of other considerations, children who are underfed, undernourished,

crowded into badly ventilated and unsanitary homes and chronically hungry cannot be expected to attain the

mental development of children upon whom every advantage of intelligent and scientific care is bestowed.

Furthermore, public school methods of dealing with children, the course of studies prescribed, may quite

The statistics indicate at any rate a surprisingly low rate of intelligence among the classes in which large

families and uncontrolled procreation predominate. Those of the lowest grade in intelligence are born of

unskilled laborers (with the highest birth rate in the community); the next high among the skilled laborers,

and so on to the families of professional people, among whom it is now admitted that the birth rate is

But scientific investigations of this type cannot be complete until statistics are accurately obtained concerning

the relation of unrestrained fecundity and the quality, mental and physical, of the children produced. The

philosophy of Birth Control therefore seeks and asks the cooperation of science and scientists, not to

strengthen its own ``case,'' but because this sexual factor in the determination of human history has so long

been ignored by historians and scientists. If science in recent years has contributed enormously to strengthen

the conviction of all intelligent people of the necessity and wisdom of Birth Control, this philosophy in its

turn opens to science in its various fields a suggestive avenue of approach to many of those problems of

[1] Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution, pp. 125, 126. [2] The Glands Regulating Personality: A

study of the glands of internal secretion in relation to the types of human nature. By Louis Berman, M. D.,

Associate in Biological Chemistry, Columbia University; Physician to the Special Health Clinic. Lenox Hill

Hospital. New York: 1921. [3] Cf Terman: Intelligence of School Children. New York 1919. p. 56. Also, ``Is

America Safe for Democracy?'' Six lectures given at the Lowell Institute of Boston, by William McDougall,

Our approach opens to us a fresh scale of values, a new and effective method of testing the merits and

demerits of current policies and programs. It redirects our attention to the great source and fountainhead of

human life. It offers us the most strategic point of view from which to observe and study the unending drama

of humanity, how the past, the present and the future of the human race are all organically bound up

together. It coordinates heredity and environment. Most important of all, it frees the mind of sexual prejudice

and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching reexamination of sex in its relation to human

nature and the bases of human society. In aiding to establish this mental liberation, quite apart from any of the

tangible results that might please the statisticallyminded, the study of Birth Control is performing an

invaluable task. Without complete mental freedom, it is impossible to approach any fundamental human

problem. Failure to face the great central facts of sex in an impartial and scientific spirit lies at the root of the

Our bitterest opponents must agree that the problem of Birth Control is one of the most important that

humanity today has to face. The interests of the entire world, of humanity, of the future of mankind itself are

more at stake in this than wars, political institutions, or industrial reorganization. All other projects of reform,

of revolution or reconstruction, are of secondary importance, even trivial, when we compare them to the

wholesale regenerationor disintegrationthat is bound up with the control, the direction and the release of

one of the greatest forces in nature. The great danger at present does not lie with the bitter opponents of the

idea of Birth Control, nor with those who are attempting to suppress our program of enlightenment and

education. Such opposition is always stimulating. It wins new adherents. It reveals its own weakness and lack

of insight. The greater danger is to be found in the flaccid, undiscriminating interest of ``sympathizers'' who

are ``for it''as an accessory to their own particular panacea. ``It even seems, sometimes,'' wrote the late

William Graham Sumner, ``as if the primitive people were working along better lines of effort in this

direction than we are...when our public organs of instruction taboo all that pertains to reproduction as

improper; and when public authority, ready enough to interfere with personal liberty everywhere else, feels

bound to act as if there were no societal interest at stake in the begetting of the next generation.''[1]

Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex; but we are breaking them down out of

sheer necessity. The codes that have surrounded sexual behavior in the socalled Christian communities, the

teachings of the churches concerning chastity and sexual purity, the prohibitions of the laws, and the

hypocritical conventions of society, have all demonstrated their failure as safeguards against the chaos

produced and the havoc wrought by the failure to recognize sex as a driving force in human nature,as great

as, if indeed not greater than, hunger. Its dynamic energy is indestructible. It may be transmuted, refined,

directed, even sublimated, but to ignore, to neglect, to refuse to recognize this great elemental force is nothing

Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence, ``chastity'' and ``purity,'' we have reaped the

harvests of prostitution, venereal scourges and innumerable other evils. Traditional moralists have failed to

recognize that chastity and purity must be the outward symptoms of awakened intelligence, of satisfied

desires, and fulfilled love. They cannot be taught by ``sex education.'' They cannot be imposed from without

by a denial of the might and the right of sexual expression. Nevertheless, even in the contemporary teaching

of sex hygiene and social prophylaxis, nothing constructive is offered to young men and young women who

At the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Bishops of the Church of England stated in their report on their

considerations of sexual morality: ``Men should regard all women as they do their mothers, sisters, and

daughters; and women should dress only in such a manner as to command respect from every man. All

rightminded persons should unite in the suppression of pernicious literature, plays and films....'' Could lack

of psychological insight and understanding be more completely indicated? Yet, like these bishops, most of

those who are undertaking the education of the young are as ignorant themselves of psychology and

physiology. Indeed, those who are speaking belatedly of the need of ``sexual hygiene'' seem to be unaware

that they themselves are most in need of it. ``We must give up the futile attempt to keep young people in the

dark,'' cries Rev. James Marchant in ``BirthRate and Empire,'' ``and the assumption that they are ignorant of

notorious facts. We cannot, if we would, stop the spread of sexual knowledge; and if we could do so, we

would only make matters infinitely worse. This is the second decade of the twentieth century, not the early

Victorian period.... It is no longer a question of knowing or not knowing. We have to disabuse our

middleaged minds of that fond delusion. Our young people know more than we did when we began our

married lives, and sometimes as much as we know, ourselves, even now. So that we need not continue to

shake our few remaining hairs in simulating feelings of surprise or horror. It might have been better for us if

we had been more enlightened. And if our discussion of this problem is to be of any real use, we must at the

outset reconcile ourselves to the fact that the birthrate is voluntarily controlled....Certain persons who

instruct us in these matter, hold up their pious hands and whiten their frightened faces as they cry out in the

public squares against `this vice,' but they can only make themselves ridiculous.''

Taught upon the basis of conventional and traditional morality and middleclass respectability, based on

current dogma, and handed down to the populace with benign condescension, sex education is a waste of time

and effort. Such education cannot in any true sense set up as a standard the ideal morality and behavior of the

respectable middle class and then make the effort to induce all other members of society, especially the

working classes, to conform to their taboos. Such a method is not only confusing, but, in the creation of strain

and hysteria and an unhealthy concentration upon moral conduct, results in positive injury. To preach a

negative and colorless ideal of chastity to young men and women is to neglect the primary duty of awakening

their intelligence, their responsibility, their selfreliance and independence. Once this is accomplished, the

matter of chastity will take care of itself. The teaching of ``etiquette'' must be superseded by the teaching of

hygiene. Hygienic habits are built up upon a sound knowledge of bodily needs and functions. It is only in the

sphere of sex that there remains an unfounded fear of presenting without the gratuitous introduction of

As an instrument of education, the doctrine of Birth Control approaches the whole problem in another

manner. Instead of laying down hard and fast laws of sexual conduct, instead of attempting to inculcate rules

and regulations, of pointing out the rewards of virtue and the penalties of ``sin'' (as is usually attempted in

relation to the venereal diseases), the teacher of Birth Control seeks to meet the needs of the people. Upon the

basis of their interests, their demands, their problems, Birth Control education attempts to develop their

intelligence and show them how they may help themselves; how to guide and control this deeprooted

The objection has been raised that Birth Control only reaches the already enlightened, the men and women

who have already attained a degree of selfrespect and selfreliance. Such an objection could not be based on

fact. Even in the most unenlightened sections of the community, among mothers crushed by poverty and

economic enslavement, there is the realization of the evils of the toolarge family, of the rapid succession of

pregnancy after pregnancy, of the hopelessness of bringing too many children into the world. Not merely in

the evidence presented in an earlier chapter but in other ways, is this crying need expressed. The investigators

of the Children's Bureau who collected the data of the infant mortality reports, noted the willingness and the

eagerness with which these downtrodden mothers told the truth about themselves. So great is their hope of

relief from that meaningless and deadening submission to unproductive reproduction, that only a society

pruriently devoted to hypocrisy could refuse to listen to the voices of these mothers. Respectfully we lend our

ears to dithyrambs about the sacredness of motherhood and the value of ``better babies''but we shut our

eyes and our ears to the unpleasant reality and the cries of pain that come from women who are today dying

This situation is rendered more bitterly ironic because the self righteous opponents of Birth Control practise

themselves the doctrine they condemn. The birthrate among conservative opponents indicates that they

restrict the numbers of their own children by the methods of Birth Control, or are of such feeble procreative

energy as to be thereby unfitted to dictate moral laws for other people. They prefer that we should think their

small number of children is accidental, rather than publicly admit the successful practice of intelligent

foresight. Or else they hold themselves up as paragons of virtue and selfcontrol, and would have us believe

that they have brought their children into the world solely from a high, stern sense of public dutyan

attitude which is about as convincing as it would be to declare that they found them under gooseberry bushes.

How else can we explain the widespread tolerance and smug approval of the clerical idea of sex, now

reenforced by floods of crude and vulgar sentiment, which is promulgated by the press, motionpictures and

Like all other education, that of sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the

interests and demands of the pupil himself. It cannot be imposed from without, handed down from above,

superimposed upon the intelligence of the person taught. It must find a response within him, give him the

power and the instrument wherewith he may exercise his own growing intelligence, bring into action his own

judgment and discrimination and thus contribute to the growth of his intelligence. The civilized world is

coming to see that education cannot consist merely in the assimilation of external information and

knowledge, but rather in the awakening and development of innate powers of discrimination and judgment.

The great disaster of ``sex education'' lies in the fact that it fails to direct the awakened interests of the pupils

into the proper channels of exercise and development. Instead, it blunts them, restricts them, hinders them,

This has been the great defect of sex education as it has been practised in recent years. Based on a superficial

and shameful view of the sexual instinct, it has sought the inculcation of negative virtues by pointing out the

sinister penalties of promiscuity, and by advocating strict adherence to virtue and morality, not on the basis of

intelligence or the outcome of experience, not even for the attainment of rewards, but merely to avoid

punishment in the form of painful and malignant disease. Education so conceived carries with it its own

refutation. True education cannot tolerate the inculcation of fear. Fear is the soil in which are implanted

inhibitions and morbid compulsions. Fear restrains, restricts, hinders human expression. It strikes at the very

roots of joy and happiness. It should therefore be the aim of sex education to avoid above all the implanting

Restriction means placing in the hands of external authority the power over behavior. Birth Control, on the

contrary, implies voluntary action, the decision for one's self how many children one shall or shall not bring

into the world. Birth Control is educational in the real sense of the word, in that it asserts this power of

We are not seeking to introduce new restrictions but greater freedom. As far as sex is concerned, the impulse

has been more thoroughly subject to restriction than any other human instinct. ``Thou shalt not!'' meets us at

every turn. Some of these restrictions are justified; some of them are not. We may have but one wife or one

husband at a time; we must attain a certain age before we may marry. Children born out of wedlock are

deemed ``illegitimate''even healthy children. The newspapers every day are filled with the scandals of

those who have leaped over the restrictions or limitations society has written in her sexual code. Yet the

voluntary control of the procreative powers, the rational regulation of the number of children we bring into

the worldthis is the one type of restriction frowned upon and prohibited by law!

In a more definite, a much more realistic and concrete manner, Birth Control reveals itself as the most

effective weapon in the spread of hygienic and prophylactic knowledge among women of the less fortunate

classes. It carries with it a thorough training in bodily cleanliness and physiology, a definite knowledge of the

physiology and function of sex. In refusing to teach both sides of the subject, in failing to respond to the

universal demand among women for such instruction and information, maternity centers limit their own

efforts and fail to fulfil what should be their true mission. They are concerned merely with pregnancy,

maternity, childbearing, the problem of keeping the baby alive. But any effective work in this field must go

further back. We have gradually come to see, as Havelock Ellis has pointed out, that comparatively little can

be done by improving merely the living conditions of adults; that improving conditions for children and

babies is not enough. To combat the evils of infant mortality, natal and prenatal care is not sufficient. Even

to improve the conditions for the pregnant woman, is insufficient. Necessarily and inevitably, we are led

further and further back, to the point of procreation; beyond that, into the regulation of sexual selection. The

problem becomes a circle. We cannot solve one part of it without a consideration of the entirety. But it is

especially at the point of creation where all the various forces are concentrated. Conception must be

controlled by reason, by intelligence, by science, or we lose control of all its consequences.

Birth Control is essentially an education for women. It is women who, directly and by their very nature, bear

the burden of that blindness, ignorance and lack of foresight concerning sex which is now enforced by law

and custom. Birth Control places in the hands of women the only effective instrument whereby they may

reestablish the balance in society, and assert, not only theoretically but practically as well, the primary

Birth Control is thus the stimulus to education. Its exercise awakens and develops the sense of selfreliance

and responsibility, and illuminates the relation of the individual to society and to the race in a manner that

otherwise remains vague and academic. It reveals sex not merely as an untamed and insatiable natural force

to which men and women must submit hopelessly and inertly, as it sweeps through them, and then accept it

with abject humility the hopeless and heavy consequences. Instead, it places in their hands the power to

control this great force; to use it, to direct it into channels in which it becomes the energy enhancing their

lives and increasing self expression and selfdevelopment. It awakens in women the consciousness of new

glories and new possibilities in motherhood. No longer the prostrate victim of the blind play of instinct but

the selfreliant mistress of her body and her own will, the new mother finds in her child the fulfilment of her

own desires. In free instead of compulsory motherhood she finds the avenue of her own development and

expression. No longer bound by an unending series of pregnancies, at liberty to safeguard the development of

her own children, she may now extend her beneficent influence beyond her own home. In becoming thus

intensified, motherhood may also broaden and become more extensive as well. The mother sees that the

welfare of her own children is bound up with the welfare of all others. Not upon the basis of sentimental

charity or gratuitous ``welfarework'' but upon that of enlightened selfinterest, such a mother may exert her

Unless based upon this central knowledge of and power over her own body and her own instincts, education

for woman is valueless. As long as she remains the plaything of strong, uncontrolled natural forces, as long as

she must docilely and humbly submit to the decisions of others, how can woman every lay the foundations of

selfrespect, self reliance and independence? How can she make her own choice, exercise her own

In the exercise of these powers, in the building up and integration of her own experience, in mastering her

own environment the true education of woman must be sought. And in the sphere of sex, the great source and

root of all human experience, it is upon the basis of Birth Controlthe voluntary direction of her own sexual

expression that woman must take her first step in the assertion of freedom and selfrespect.

By no means is it necessary to look forward to some vague and distant date of the future to test the benefits

which the human race derives from the program I have suggested in the preceding pages. The results to the

individual woman, to the family, and to the State, particularly in the case of Holland, have already been

investigated and recorded. Our philosophy is no doctrine of escape from the immediate and pressing realities

of life. on the contrary, we say to men and women, and particularly to the latter: face the realities of your own

soul and body; know thyself! And in this last admonition, we mean that this knowledge should not consist of

some vague shopworn generalities about the nature of womanwoman as created in the minds of men, nor

woman putting herself on a romantic pedestal above the harsh facts of this workaday world. Women can

attain freedom only by concrete, definite knowledge of themselves, a knowledge based on biology,

Nevertheless it would be wrong to shut our eyes to the vision of a world of free men and women, a world

which would more closely resemble a garden than the present jungle of chaotic conflicts and fears. One of the

greatest dangers of social idealists, to all of us who hope to make a better world, is to seek refuge in highly

colored fantasies of the future rather than to face and combat the bitter and evil realities which today on all

sides confront us. I believe that the reader of my preceding chapters will not accuse me of shirking these

realities; indeed, he may think that I have overemphasized the great biological problems of defect,

delinquency and bad breeding. It is in the hope that others too may glimpse my vision of a world regenerated

that I submit the following suggestions. They are based on the belief that we must seek individual and racial

health not by great political or social reconstruction, but, turning to a recognition of our own inherent powers

and development, by the release of our inner energies. It is thus that all of us can best aid in making of this

Let us first of all consider merely from the viewpoint of business and ``efficiency'' the biological or racial

problems which confront us. As Americans, we have of late made much of ``efficiency'' and business

organization. Yet would any corporation for one moment conduct its affairs as we conduct the infinitely more

important affairs of our civilization? Would any modern stockbreeder permit the deterioration of his livestock

as we not only permit but positively encourage the destruction and deterioration of the most precious, the

most essential elements in our world communitythe mothers and children. With the mothers and children

thus cheapened, the next generation of men and women is inevitably below par. The tendency of the human

Turn to Robert M. Yerkes's ``Psychological Examining in the United States Army''[1] in which we are

informed that the psychological examination of the drafted men indicated that nearly half47.3 per

cent.of the population had the mentality of twelveyearold children or lessin other words that they are

morons. Professor Conklin, in his recently published volume ``The Direction of Human Evolution''[2] is led,

on the findings of Mr. Yerkes's report, to assert: ``Assuming that these drafted men are a fair sample of the

entire population of approximately 100,000,000, this means that 45,000,000 or nearly one half the entire

population, will never develop mental capacity beyond the stage represented by a normal twelveyearold

Making all due allowances for the errors and discrepancies of the psychological examination, we are

nevertheless face to face with a serious and destructive practice. Our ``overhead'' expense in segregating the

delinquent, the defective and the dependent, in prisons, asylums and permanent homes, our failure to

segregate morons who are increasing and multiplyingI have sufficiently indicated, though in truth I have

merely scratched the surface of this international menacedemonstrate our foolhardy and extravagant

sentimentalism. No industrial corporation could maintain its existence upon such a foundation. Yet

hardheaded ``captains of industry,'' financiers who pride themselves upon their coolheaded and keen

sighted business ability are dropping millions into rosewater philanthropies and charities that are silly at best

and vicious at worst. In our dealings with such elements there is a bland maladministration and misuse of

huge sums that should in all righteousness be used for the development and education of the healthy elements

At the present time, civilized nations are penalizing talent and genius, the bearers of the torch of civilization,

to coddle and perpetuate the choking human undergrowth, which, as all authorities tell us, is escaping control

and threatens to overrun the whole garden of humanity. Yet men continue to drug themselves with the opiate

of optimism, or sink back upon the cushions of Christian resignation, their intellectual powers anaesthetized

by cheerful platitudes. Or else, even those, who are fully cognizant of the chaos and conflict, seek an escape

in those pretentious but fundamentally fallacious social philosophies which place the blame for contemporary

world misery upon anybody or anything except the indomitable but uncontrolled instincts of living

organisms. These men fight with shadows and forget the realities of existence. Too many centuries have we

sought to hide from the inevitable, which confronts us at every step throughout life.

Let us conceive for the moment at least, a world not burdened by the weight of dependent and delinquent

classes, a total population of mature, intelligent, critical and expressive men and women. Instead of the inert,

exploitable, mentally passive class which now forms the barren substratum of our civilization, try to imagine

a population active, resistant, passing individual and social lives of the most contented and healthy sort.

Would such men and women, liberated from our endless, unceasing struggle against mass prejudice and

inertia, be deprived in any way of the stimulating zest of life? Would they sink into a slough of complacency

No! Life for them would be enriched, intensified and ennobled in a fashion it is difficult for us in our spiritual

and physical squalor even to imagine. There would be a new renaissance of the arts and sciences. Awakened

at last to the proximity of the treasures of life lying all about them, the children of that age would be inspired

by a spirit of adventure and romance that would indeed produce a terrestrial paradise.

Let us look forward to this great release of creative and constructive energy, not as an idle, vacuous mirage,

but as a promise which we, as the whole human race, have it in our power, in the very conduct of our lives

from day to day, to transmute into a glorious reality. Let us look forward to that era, perhaps not so distant as

we believe, when the great adventures in the enchanted realm of the arts and sciences may no longer be the

privilege of a gifted few, but the rightful heritage of a race of genius. In such a world men and women would

no longer seek escape from themselves by the fantastic and the faraway. They would be awakened to the

realization that the source of life, of happiness, is to be found not outside themselves, but within, in the

healthful exercise of their Godgiven functions. The treasures of life are not hidden; they are close at hand,

so close that we overlook them. We cheat ourselves with a pitiful fear of ourselves. Men and women of the

future will not seek happiness; they will have gone beyond it. Mere happiness would produce monotony. And

their lives shall be lives of change and variety with the thrills produced by experiment and research.

Fear will have been abolished: first of all, the fear of outside things and other people; finally the fear of

oneself. And with these fears must disappear forever all those poisons of hatreds, individual and international.

For the realization would come that there would be no reason for, no value in encroaching upon, the freedom

of one another. Today we are living in a world which is like a forest of trees too thickly planted. Hence the

ferocious, unending struggle for existence. Like innumerable ages past, the present age is one of mutual

destruction. Our aim is to substitute cooperation, equity, and amity for antagonism and conflict. If the aim of

our country or our civilization is to attain a hollow, meaningless superiority over others in aggregate wealth

and population, it may be sound policy to shut our eyes to the sacrifice of human life,unregarded life and

sufferingand to stimulate rapid procreation. But even so, such a policy is bound in the long run to defeat

itself, as the decline and fall of great civilizations of the past emphatically indicate. Even the bitterest

opponent of our ideals would refuse to subscribe to a philosophy of mere quantity, of wealth and population

lacking in spiritual direction or significance. All of us hope for and look forward to the fine flowering of

human geniusof genius not expending and dissipating its energy in the bitter struggle for mere existence,

but developing to a fine maturity, sustained and nourished by the soil of active appreciation, criticism, and

Not by denying the central and basic biological facts of our nature, not by subscribing to the glittering but

false values of any philosophy or program of escape, not by wild Utopian dreams of the brotherhood of men,

not by any sanctimonious debauch of sentimentality or religiosity, may we accomplish the first feeble step

toward liberation. On the contrary, only by firmly planting our feet on the solid ground of scientific fact may

we even stand erectmay we even rise from the servile stooping posture of the slave, borne down by the

In looking forward to this radiant release of the inner energies of a regenerated humanity, I am not thinking

merely of inventions and discoveries and the application of these to the perfecting of the external and

mechanical details of social life. This external and scientific perfecting of the mechanism of external life is a

phenomenon we are to a great extent witnessing today. But in a deeper sense this tendency can be of no true

or lasting value if it cannot be made to subserve the biological and spiritual development of the human

organism, individual and collective. Our great problem is not merely to perfect machinery, to produce superb

ships, motor cars or great buildings, but to remodel the race so that it may equal the amazing progress we see

now making in the externals of life. We must first free our bodies from disease and predisposition to disease.

We must perfect these bodies and make them fine instruments of the mind and the spirit. Only thus, when the

body becomes an aid instead of a hindrance to human expression may we attain any civilization worthy of the

name. Only thus may we create our bodies a fitting temple for the soul, which is nothing but a vague

unreality except insofar as it is able to manifest itself in the beauty of the concrete.

Once we have accomplished the first tentative steps toward the creation of a real civilization, the task of

freeing the spirit of mankind from the bondage of ignorance, prejudice and mental passivity which is more

fettering now than ever in the history of humanity, will be facilitated a thousandfold. The great central

problem, and one which must be taken first is the abolition of the shame and fear of sex. We must teach men

the overwhelming power of this radiant force. We must make them understand that uncontrolled, it is a cruel

tyrant, but that controlled and directed, it may be used to transmute and sublimate the everyday world into a

realm of beauty and joy. Through sex, mankind may attain the great spiritual illumination which will

transform the world, which will light up the only path to an earthly paradise. So must we necessarily and

inevitably conceive of sex expression. The instinct is here. None of us can avoid it. It is in our power to

make it a thing of beauty and a joy forever: or to deny it, as have the ascetics of the past, to revile this

expression and then to pay the penalty, the bitter penalty that Society today is paying in innumerable ways.

If I am criticized for the seeming ``selfishness'' of this conception it will be through a misunderstanding. The

individual is fulfiling his duty to society as a whole by not selfsacrifice but by self development. He does

his best for the world not by dying for it, not by increasing the sum total of misery, disease and unhappiness,

but by increasing his own stature, by releasing a greater energy, by being active instead of passive, creative

instead of destructive. This is fundamentally the greatest truth to be discovered by womankind at large. And

until women are awakened to their pivotal function in the creation of a new civilization, that new era will

remain an impossible and fantastic dream. The new civilization can become a glorious reality only with the

awakening of woman's now dormant qualities of strength, courage, and vigor. As a great thinker of the last

century pointed out, not only to her own health and happiness is the physical degeneracy of woman

destructive, but to our whole race. The physical and psychic power of woman is more indispensable to the

wellbeing and power of the human race than that even of man, for the strength and happiness of the child is

Parallel with the awakening of woman's interest in her own fundamental nature, in her realization that her

greatest duty to society lies in selfrealization, will come a greater and deeper love for all of humanity. For in

attaining a true individuality of her own she will understand that we are all individuals, that each human

being is essentially implicated in every question or problem which involves the wellbeing of the humblest of

us. So today we are not to meet the great problems of defect and delinquency in any merely sentimental or

superficial manner, but with the firmest and most unflinching attitude toward the true interest of our fellow

beings. It is from no mere feeling of brotherly love or sentimental philanthropy that we women must insist

upon enhancing the value of child life. It is because we know that, if our children are to develop to their full

capabilities, all children must be assured a similar opportunity. Every single case of inherited defect, every

malformed child, every congenitally tainted human being brought into this world is of infinite importance to

that poor individual; but it is of scarcely less importance to the rest of us and to all of our children who must

pay in one way or another for these biological and racial mistakes. We look forward in our vision of the

future to children brought into the world because they are desired, called from the unknown by a fearless and

conscious passion, because women and men need children to complete the symmetry of their own

development, no less than to perpetuate the race. They shall be called into a world enhanced and made

beautiful by the spirit of freedom and romanceinto a world wherein the creatures of our new day,

unhampered and unbound by the sinister forces of prejudice and immovable habit, may work out their own

destinies. Perhaps we may catch fragmentary glimpses of this new life in certain societies of the past, in

Greece perhaps; but in all of these past civilizations these happy groups formed but a small exclusive section

of the population. Today our task is greater; for we realize that no section of humanity can be reclaimed

I look, therefore, into a Future when men and women will not dissipate their energy in the vain and fruitless

search for content outside of themselves, in faraway places or people. Perfect masters of their own inherent

powers, controlled with a fine understanding of the art of life and of love, adapting themselves with pliancy

and intelligence to the milieu in which they find themselves, they will unafraid enjoy life to the utmost.

Women will for the first time in the unhappy history of this globe establish a true equilibrium and ``balance

of power'' in the relation of the sexes. The old antagonism will have disappeared, the old illconcealed

warfare between men and women. For the men themselves will comprehend that in this cultivation of the

human garden they will be rewarded a thousand times. Interest in the vague sentimental fantasies of

extramundane existence, in pathological or hysterical flights from the realities of our earthliness, will have

through atrophy disappeared, for in that dawn men and women will have come to the realization, already

suggested, that here close at hand is our paradise, our everlasting abode, our Heaven and our eternity. Not by

leaving it and our essential humanity behind us, nor by sighing to be anything but what we are, shall we ever

become ennobled or immortal. Not for woman only, but for all of humanity is this the field where we must

[1] Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences. Volume XV. [2] Conklin, The Direction of Human

Evolution. ``When it is remembered that mental capacity is inherited, that parents of low intelligence

generally produce children of low intelligence, and that on the average they have more children than persons

of high intelligence, and furthermore, when we consider that the intellectual capacity or `mental age' can be

changed very little by education, we are in a position to appreciate the very serious condition which confronts

The complex problems now confronting America as the result of the practice of reckless procreation are fast

Everywhere we see poverty and large families going hand in hand. Those least fit to carry on the race are

increasing most rapidly. People who cannot support their own offspring are encouraged by Church and State

to produce large families. Many of the children thus begotten are diseased or feebleminded; many become

criminals. The burden of supporting these unwanted types has to be bourne by the healthy elements of the

nation. Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to the maintenance of

In addition to this grave evil we witness the appalling waste of women's health and women's lives by too

frequent pregnancies. These unwanted pregnancies often provoke the crime of abortion, or alternatively

To create a race of well born children it is essential that the function of motherhood should be elevated to a

position of dignity, and this is impossible as long as conception remains a matter of chance.

1. Conceived in love; 2. Born of the mother's conscious desire; 3. And only begotten under conditions which

Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when

Every mother must realize her basic position in human society. She must be conscious of her responsibility to

Instead of being a blind and haphazard consequence of uncontrolled instinct, motherhood must be made the

These purposes, which are of fundamental importance to the whole of our nation and to the future of

mankind, can only be attained if women first receive practical scientific education in the means of Birth

Control. That, therefore, is the first object to which the efforts of this League will be directed.

The American Birth Control League aims to enlighten and educate all sections of the American public in the

various aspects of the dangers of uncontrolled procreation and the imperative necessity of a world program of

The League aims to correlate the findings of scientists, statisticians, investigators, and social agencies in all

RESEARCH: To collect the findings of scientists, concerning the relation of reckless breeding to the evils of

INVESTIGATION: To derive from these scientifically ascertained facts and figures, conclusions which may

aid all public health and social agencies in the study of problems of maternal and infant mortality,

childlabor, mental and physical defects and delinquence in relation to the practice of reckless parentage.

HYGIENIC AND PHYSIOLOGICAL instruction by the Medical profession to mothers and potential

mothers in harmless and reliable methods of Birth Control in answer to their requests for such knowledge.

STERILIZATION of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those

afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive

the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him incapable of producing children.

EDUCATIONAL: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of the public at large, mainly

through the education of leaders of thought and opinionteachers, ministers, editors and writersto the

moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and the imperative necessity of its adoption

POLITICAL AND LEGISLATIVE: To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisers, statesmen and

legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase

the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the establishment of a policy of national health and

ORGANIZATION: To send into the various States of the Union field workers to enlist the support and arouse

the interest of the masses, to the importance of Birth Control so that laws may be changed and the

INTERNATIONAL: This department aims to cooperate with similar organizations in other countries to study

Birth Control in its relations to the world population problem, food supplies, national and racial conflicts, and

to urge upon all international bodies organized to promote world peace, the consideration of these aspects of

THE AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE proposes to publish in its official organ ``The Birth Control

Review,'' reports and studies on the relationship of controlled and uncontrolled populations to national and

The American Birth Control League also proposes to hold an annual Conference to bring together the

workers of the various departments so that each worker may realize the interrelationship of all the various

phases of the problem to the end that National education will tend to encourage and develop the powers of

selfdirection, selfreliance, and independence in the individuals of the community instead of dependence