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WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW 
RACE 


THE  AUTHOR  AND  HER  SONS 


WOMAN  AND  THE 
NEW  RACE 


BY 

MARGARET   SANGER 


With  a  Preface  by 
HAVELOCK  ELLIS 


EUGENICS  PUBLISHING  COjVIPANY 
NEW  YORK 


Copyright,   1920,  by 
Brentano's,  Inc. 


jill  Riff /its   Reserved 


First  Printing,  August,   1920 

Second  Printing,  October,   1920 

Third   Printing,   January,   1921 

Fourth  Printing,  April,    1921 

Fifth  Printing,  August,  1922 

Sixth  Printing,  July,   1923 


MADE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


r1  f    ' 


DEDICATED  TO 

THE  MEMORY  OF  AIY  MOTHER, 

A  MOTHES 

WHO  GAV8  BI&TB  TO  GLBVBH  UVINO  CMniffigM 


PREFACE 


THE  modern  Woman  Movement,  Kke  the 
modem  Labour  Movement,  may  be 
tsaid  to  have  begmi  in  the  Eighteenth  centmy* 
The  Labom*  movement  arose  out  of  the  Indus- 
trial Revolution  with  its  resultant  tendency  tc 
over-population,  to  imrestricted  competition^ 
to  social  misery  and  disorder*  The  Woman 
movement  appeared  as  an  at  first  neglected 
by-product  of  the  French  Revolution  with  its 
impulses  of  general  human  expansion^  of  tree* 
dom  and  of  equality. 

Since  then,  as  we  know,  these  two  move^ 
ments  have  each  had  a  great  and  vigorous 
career  which  is  still  far  from  completed.  On 
the  whole  they  have  moved  independently 
along  separate  lines,  and  have  at  times  seemed 
mdeed  almost  hostile  to  each  other.  That  has 
ceased  to  be  tie  case.  Of  recent  years  it  has 
been  seen  not  only  that  these  two  movements 

rvii] 


PREFACE 


THE  modern  Woman  Movement,  like  the 
modem  Labour  Movement,  may  be 
said  to  have  begmi  in  the  Eighteenth  centiuye 
The  Labour  movement  arose  out  of  the  Indus- 
trial Revolution  with  its  resultant  tendency  tc 
over-population,  to  imrestricted  competition* 
to  social  misery  and  disorder*  The  Woman 
movement  appeared  as  an  at  first  neglected 
by-product  of  the  French  Revolution  with  its 
impulses  of  general  human  expansion^  of  free* 
dom  and  of  equality. 

Since  then,  as  we  know,  these  two  move 
ments  have  each  had  a  great  and  vigorous 
career  which  is  still  far  from  completed.  On 
the  whole  they  have  moved  independently 
along  separate  lines,  and  have  at  times  seemed 
mdeed  almost  hostile  to  each  other.  That  has 
ceased  to  be  the  case.  Of  recent  years  it  has 
been  seen  not  only  that  these  two  movements 


PREFACE 

ore  not  hostile,   but  that  they  may  work 
together  harmoniously  for  similar  ends. 

One  final  step  remained  to  be  taken  ^-^  it 
had  to  be  realised  not  only  that  the  Labour 
movement  could  give  the  secret  of  success  to 
the  woman  movement  by  its  method  and  organ- 
ization, but  that  on  the  other  hand,  woman 
held  the  secret  without  which  labour  is  im« 
potent  to  reach  its  ends.  Woman,  by  virtue 
of  motherhood  is  the  regulator  of  the  birth- 
rate, the  sacred  disposer  of  human  production. 
It  is  in  the  deliberate  restraint  and  measure- 
ment of  human  production  that  the  funda- 
mental problems  of  the  family,  the  nation,  the 
whole  brotherhood  of  mankind  find  their  solu- 
tion. The  health  and  longevity  of  the  indi- 
vidual, the  economic  welfare  of  the  workers, 
the  general  level  of  culture  of  the  community, 
the  possibility  of  abolishing  from  the  world 
the  desolating  scourge  of  war  —  all  these  like 
great  human  needs,  depend,  primarily  and 
fundamentally,  on  the  wise  limitation  of  the 
human  output.  It  does  not  certainly  make 
them  inevitable,  but  it  renders  them  possible 
of  accomplishment;  without  it  they  have  been 
clearly  and  repeatedly  proved  to  be  impossible. 

[viin 


PREFACE 

These  facts  have  long  been  known  to  the 
few  who  view  the  world  realistically.  But  it  is 
not  the  lew  who  rule  the  world.  It  is  the 
masses — the  ignorant,  emotional,  volatile, 
superstitious  masses  —  w^ho  rule  the  world.  Ik 
is  they  who  choose  the  few  supreme  persons 
who  manage  or  mismanage  the  world's  aff airs. 
Even  the  most  stupid  of  us  must  be  able  to  see 
how  it  is  done  now,  for  diu"ing  recent  years  the 
whole  process  has  been  displayed  before  us 
on  the  very  largest  scale. 

The  lesson  has  not  been  altogether  in  vain. 
It  is  furnishing  a  new  stimulus  to  those  who 
are  working  for  the  increase  of  knowledge,  and 
of  practical  action  based  on  knowledge,  among 
the  masses,  the  masses  who  alone  possess  the 
power  to  change  the  force  of  the  world  for 
good  or  for  evil,  and  by  growth  in  wisdom  to 
raise  the  human  race  on  to  a  higher  level. 

That  is  why  the  little  book  by  Margaret 
Sanger,  whose  right  to  speak  with  authority 
on  these  matters  we  all  recognize,  cannot  be 
too  widely  read.  To  the  few  who  think,  though 
they  may  here  and  there  differ  on  points  of 
detail,  it  is  all  as  familiar  as  A.  B.  C.  But  to 
the  millions  who  rule  the  world  it  is  not 

rixi 


PREFACE 

familiar,  and  still  less  to  the  handful  of 
superior  persons  whom  the  masses  elect  to 
supreme  positions.  Therefore,  let  this  book 
be  read;  let  it  be  read  by  every  man  and  woman 
who  can  read.  And  the  sooner  it  is  not  only 
«read  but  acted  on,  the  better  for  the  world. 

Havelock  Ellis, 


CONTENTS 

C    Woman's  Error  and  Her  Debt.,  „ I 

II    V/oman's  Struggle  for  Freedom,  , , . .  9 

in    The  Materl\l  of  ths  h ew  Race. . , .  30 

W    Two  Classes  of  Womsn , .  47 

?    The  W icKEDNEss  of  Creating  Large 

Families  ........  o &i 

VI    Cries  of  Despair ,  72 

¥1  f    When  Should  a  Woman  Avoid  Having 

Children? , .  $3 

VIII    Birth  Control— A  Parents'' Problem 

or  Woman's? 93 

IX    Continence— Is   It  Practicable   or 

Desirable? , . , .  101 

K    Contraceptives  or  Abortion?,....,,  IIB 
Kl    Are  pREVENTr\rB  Means  Certain?.  ....  130 
KII    Will  Birth  Control  Help  the  Cause 

OS  Labor? ,  138 

XIII  Battalions  of  Unwanted  Babies  The 

Cause  OF  WaRc 151 

XIV  Woman  and  the  New  Morality 167 

XV    Legisiating  Woman's  Morals.  ...,,,    185 

XVI    Wht    Not    Birth   Control  Clinics 

IN  America? .c , . . ,.  198 

XVII    Progress  We  Have  Made,  ......,.,,.    21C 

xvin  TheGoal. ....-,.,....      22a 


fXT> 


WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW 
RACE 


WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

CHAPTER  I 
woman's  error  and  her  debt 

THE  most  far-reaching  social  develop 
ment  of  modem  times  is  the  revolt  of 
woman  against  sex  servitude.  The  most  im 
portant  force  in  the  remaking  of  the  world  is 
a  free  motherhood.  Beside  this  force,  the 
elaborate  international  programmes  of  modern 
statesmen  are  weak  and  superficial.  Diplo- 
mats may  formulate  leagues  of  nations  and 
nations  may  pledge  their  utmost  strength  to 
maintain  them,  statesmen  may  dream  of  recon- 
structing the  world  out  of  alliances,  hegem- 
onies and  spheres  of  influence,  but  woman, 
continuing  to  produce  explosive  populations, 
will  convert  these  pledges  into  the  proverbial 
scraps  of  paper;  or  she  may,  by  controlling 
birth,  lift  motherhood  to  the  plane  of  a  volun* 
tary,  intelligent  function,  and  remake  the 
world.  When  the  world  is  thus  remade,  it  will 
exceed  the  dream  of  statesman,  reformer  and 

fevolutionist. 

1 


2    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  KACE 

Only  in  recent  years  has  woman's  position 
as  the  gentler  and  weaker  half  of  the  human 
family  been  emphatically  and  generally  ques* 
tioned.  Men  assumed  that  this  was  woman's 
place;  woman  herself  accepted  it.  It  seldom 
occurred  to  anvone  to  ask  whether  she  would 
go  on  occupying  it  forever. 

Upon  the  mere  surface  of  woman's  organ- 
ized protests  there  were  no  indications  that  she 
was  desirous  of  achieving  a  fundamental 
change  in  her  position.  She  claimed  the  right 
of  suffrage  and  legislative  regulation  of  her 
working  hourSs  and  asked  that  her  property 
rights  be  equal  to  those  of  the  man.  None  of 
these  demands,  however,  affected  directly  the 
most  vital  factors  of  her  existence.  Wliether 
she  won  her  point  or  failed  to  win  it,  she 
remained  a  dominated  wealding  in  a  society 
controlled  by  men. 

Woman's  acceptance  cf  her  inferior  status 
was  the  more  real  because  it  was  unconscious. 
She  had  chained  herself  to  her  place  in  society 
and  the  family  through  the  maternal  functions 
of  her  nature,  and  only  chains  thus  strong  could 
have  bound  her  to  her  lot  as  a  brood  animal  for 
the  masculine  civilizations  of  the  world.     In 


WOMAN'S  EKROK  AND  DEBT     S 

accepting  her  role  as  the  "  weaker  and  gentler 
half,"  she  accepted  that  function.  In  turns 
the  acceptance  of  that  function  fixed  the  more 
firmly  her  rank  as  an  inferior. 

Caught  in  this  "  vicious  circle,"  woman  has, 
through  her  reproductive  ability,  founded  and 
perpetuated  the  tyrannies  of  the  Earth. 
Whether  it  was  the  tyranny  of  a  monarchy,  an. 
oligarchy  or  a  republic,  the  one  indispensable 
factor  of  its  existence  was,  as  it  is  now,  hordes 
of  human  beings  —  human  beings  so  plentiful 
as  to  be  cheap,  and  so  cheap  that  ignorance 
was  their  natural  lot.  Upon  the  rock  of  an 
unenlightened,  submissive  maternity  have 
these  been  founded;  upon  the  product  of  such 
a  maternity  have  they  flourished. 

No  despot  ever  flung  forth  his  legions  to  die 
in  foreign  conquest,  no  privilege-ruled  nation 
ever  erupted  across  its  borders,  to  lock  in  death 
embrace  with  another,  but  behind  them  loomed 
the  driving  power  of  a  population  too  large 
for  its  boundaries  and  its  natural  resources. 

No  period  of  low  wages  or  of  idleness  with 
their  want  among  the  workers,  no  peonage  or 
sweatshop,  no  child-labor  factory,  ever  came 
into  being,  save  from  the  same  source.    Nor 


4    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

have  famine  and  plague  been  as  much  "  acts  of 
God  "  as  acts  of  too  prolific  mothers.  They, 
also,  as  all  students  know,  have  their  basic 
causes  in  over-population. 

The  creators  of  over-population  are  the 
women,  who,  while  wringing  their  hands  over 
each  fresh  horror,  submit  anew  to  their  task 
of  producing  the  multitudes  who  will  bring 
about  the  nea^t  tragedy  of  civilization. 

While  unknowingly  laying  the  foundations 
of  tyrannies  and  providing  the  human  tinder 
for  racial  conflagrations,  woman  was  also 
unknowingly  creating  slums,  filling  asylums 
with  insane,  and  institutions  with  other  defec- 
tives. She  was  replenishing  the  ranks  of  the 
prostitutes,  furnishing  grist  for  the  criminal 
courts  and  inmates  for  prisons.  Had  she 
planned  deliberately  to  achieve  this  tragic  total 
of  human  waste  and  misery,  she  could  hardly 
have  done  it  more  effectively. 

Woman's  passivity  under  the  burden  of  her 
disastrous  task  was  almost  altogether  that  of 
ignorant  resignation.  She  knew  virtually 
nothing  about  her  reproductive  nature  and  less 
about  the  consequences  of  her  excessive  child- 
bearing.     It  is  true  that,  obeying  the  inner 


WOMAN'S  ERROR  AND  DEBT     5 

urge  of  their  natures,  some  women  revolted. 
They  went  even  to  the  extreme  of  infanticide 
and  abortion.  Usually  their  revolts  were  not 
general  enough.  They  fought  as  individuals, 
not  as  a  mass.  In  the  mass  they  sank  back 
into  blind  and  hopeless  subjection.  They  went 
on  breeding  with  staggering  rapidity  those 
numberless,  undesired  children  who  become  the 
clogs  and  the  destroyers  of  civilizations. 

To-day,  however,  woman  is  rising  in  funda- 
mental revolt.  Even  her  efforts  at  mere 
reform  are,  as  we  shall  see  later,  steps  in  that 
direction.  Underneath  each  of  them  is  the 
feminine  lu'ge  to  complete  freedom.  Millions 
of  women  are  asserting  their  right  to  voluntary 
motherhood.  They  are  determined  to  decide 
for  themselves  whether  they  shall  become 
mothers,  under  what  conditions  and  when. 
This  is  the  fundamental  revolt  referred  to.  It 
is  for  woman  the  key  to  the  temple  of  liberty. 

Even  as  birth  control  is  the  means  by  which 
woman  attains  basic  freedom,  so  it  is  the  means 
by  which  she  must  and  will  uproot  the  evil  she 
has  wrought  through  her  submission.  As  she 
has  imconsciously  and  ignorantly  brought 
about  social  disaster,  so  must  and  will  she  con* 


6    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  UACE 

sciously  and  intelligently  undo  that  disaster 
and  create  a  new  and  a  better  order. 

The  task  is  hers.  It  cannot  be  avoided  by 
excuses,  nor  can  it  be  delegated.  It  is  not 
enough  for  woman  to  point  to  the  self-evident 
domination  of  man.  Nor  does  it  avail  to  plead 
the  guilt  of  rulers  and  the  exploiters  of  labor. 
It  makes  no  difference  that  she  does  not  f orm* 
ulate  industrial  systems  nor  that  she  is  an 
instinctive  believer  in  social  justice.  In  her 
submission  lies  her  error  and  her  guilt.  By 
her  failure  to  witliiiold  the  multitudes  of  chil- 
dren who  have  made  inevitable  the  most  fla- 
grant of  our  social  evils,  she  incurred  a  debt  to 
society.  Regardless  of  her  own  wrongs, 
regardless  of  her  lack  of  opportunity  and 
regardless  of  all  other  considerations,  she  must 
pay  that  debt. 

She  must  not  think  to  pay  this  debt  in  any 
superficial  way.  She  cannot  pay  it  with  pal- 
liatives—  with  child-labor  laws,  prohibition, 
regulation  of  prostitution  and  agitation  against 
war.  Political  nostrums  and  social  panaceas 
are  but  incidentally  and  superficially  useful. 
They  do  not  touch  the  source  of  the  social 
disease. 


WOMAN  S  ERROR  AND  DEBT     7 

War,  famine,  poverty  and  oppression  of  the 
workers  will  continue  while  woman  makes  life 
cheap.  They  will  cease  only  when  she  hmits 
her  reproductivity  and  hmnan  life  is  no  longer 
a  thing  to  be  wasted. 

Two  chief  obstacles  hinder  the  discharge  of 
this  tremendous  obligation.  The  first  and  the 
lesser  is  the  legal  barrier.  Dark-Age  laws 
would  still  deny  to  her  the  knowledge  of  her 
reproductive  nature.  Such  knowledge  is  indis- 
pensable to  intelligent  motherhood  and  she 
must  achieve  it,  despite  absurd  statutes  and 
equally  absurd  moral  canons. 

The  second  and  more  serious  barrier  is  her 
ov/n  ignorance  of  the  extent  and  effect  of  her 
submission.  Until  she  knows  the  evil  her  sub- 
jection has  wrought  to  herself,  to  her  progeny 
and  to  the  world  at  laige,  she  cannot  wipe  out 
that  evil. 

To  get  rid  of  these  obstacles  is  to  invite 
attack  from  the  forces  of  reaction  which  are 
so  strongly  entrenched  in  our  present-day 
society.  It  means  warfare  in  every  phase  of 
her  life.  Nevertheless,  at  whatever  cost,  she 
must  emerge  from  her  ignorance  and  assume 
her  responsibility. 


S    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

She  can  do  this  only  when  she  has  awakened 
to  a  knowledge  of  herself  and  of  the  conse* 
quences  of  her  ignorance.  The  first  step  is 
birth  control.  Through  birth  control  she  will 
attain  to  voluntary  motherhood.  Having 
attained  this,  the  basic  freedom  of  her  sex, 
she  will  cease  to  enslave  herself  and  the  mass 
of  humanity.  Then,  through  the  imderstand- 
ing  of  the  intuitive  forward  urge  within  her, 
she  will  not  stop  at  patching  up  the  world  j 
she  will  remake  it. 


CHAPTER  II 

WOMAN'^S  STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM 

BEHIND  all  customs  of  whatever  nature; 
behind  all  social  unrest,  behind  all  move- 
ments, behind  all  revolutions,  are  great  driving 
forces,  which  in  their  action  and  reaction  upon 
conditions,  give  character  to  civilization.  If, 
in  seeking  to  discover  the  source  of  a  custom, 
of  a  movement  or  of  a  revolution,  we  stop  at 
surface  conditions,  we  shall  never  discern  more 
than  a  superficial  aspect  of  the  imderlying 
truth. 

This  is  the  error  into  which  the  historian 
has  almost  universally  fallen.  It  is  also  a 
common  error  among  sociologists.  It  is  the 
fashion  nowadays,  for  instance,  to  explain  all 
social  unrest  in  terms  of  economic  conditions. 
This  is  a  valuable  working  theory  and  has 
done  much  to  awaken  men  to  their  injustice 
toward  one  another,  but  it  ignores  the  forces 
within  humanity  which  drive  it  to  revolt.  It 
Is  these  forces,  rather  than  the  conditions  upon 


10   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

whicli  they  react,  that  are  the  important  fac«» 
tors.  Conditions  change,  but  the  animating 
force  goes  on  forever. 

So,  too,  with  woman's  struggle  for  emanci* 
pation.  Women  in  all  lands  and  all  ages 
have  instinctively  desired  family  limitation. 
Usually  this  desire  has  been  laid  to  economic 
pressure.  Frequently  the  pressure  has  existed, 
but  the  driving  force  behind  woman's  aspira- 
tion toward  freedom  has  lain  deeper.  It  has 
asserted  itself  among  the  rich  and  among  the 
poor,  among  the  intelligent  and  the  unintelli- 
gent. It  has  been  manifested  in  such 
horrors  as  infanticide,  child  abandonment  and 
abortion. 

The  only  term  sufficiently  comprehensive  to 
define  this  motive  power  of  woman's  nature 
is  the  feminine  spirit.  That  spirit  manifests 
itself  most  frequently  in  motherhood,  but  it  is 
greater  than  maternity.  Woman  herself,  all 
that  she  is,  all  that  she  has  ever  been,  all  that 
she  may  be,  is  but  the  outworking  of  this  inner 
spiritual  urge.  Given  free  play,  this  supreme 
law  of  her  nature  asserts  itself  in  beneficent 
ways;  interfered  with,  it  becomes  destructivCo 
Only  when  we  understand  this  can  we  compre* 


STRUGGLE   FOR  FREEDOM      11 

bend  the  efforts  of  the  feminine  spirit  to  liber- 
ate itself. 

When  the  outworking  of  this  force  within 
her  is  hampered  by  the  bearing  and  the  care  of 
too  many  children,  woman  rebels.  Hence  it  is 
that,  from  time  immemorial,  she  has  sought 
some  form  of  family  limitation.  When  she  has 
not  employed  such  measures  consciously,  she 
has  done  so  instinctively.  Where  laws,  cus* 
toms  and  religious  restrictions  do  not  prevent, 
she  has  recourse  to  contraceptives.  Otherwise, 
she  resorts  to  child  abandonment,  abortion  and 
infanticide,  or  resigns  herself  hopelessly  to 
enforced  maternity. 

These  violent  means  of  freeing  herself  from 
the  chains  of  her  own  reproductivity  have  been 
most  in  evidence  where  economic  conditions 
have  made  the  care  of  children  even  more  of 
a  burden  than  it  would  otherwise  have  been. 
But,  whether  in  the  luxurious  home  of  the 
Athenian,  the  poverty-ridden  dwelling  of  the 
Chinese,  or  the  crude  hut  of  the  primitive 
Australian  savage,  the  woman  whose  develop- 
ment has  been  interfered  with  by  the  bearing 
and  rearing  of  children  has  tried  desperately. 


12   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

frantically,  too  often  in  vain,  to  take  and  hold 
her  freedom. 

Individual  men  have  sometimes  acquiesced 
in  these  violent  measures,  but  in  the  mass  they 
have  opposed.  By  law,  by  religious  canons, 
by  public  opinion,  by  penalties  ranging  all  the 
way  from  ostracism  to  beheading,  they  have 
sought  to  crush  this  effort.  Neither  threat 
of  hell  nor  the  infliction  of  physical  punish- 
ment has  availed.  Women  have  deceived 
"and  dared,  resisted  and  defied  the  power  of 
church  and  state.  Quietly,  desperately,  con- 
sciously, they  have  marched  to  the  gates  of 
death  to  gain  the  liberty  which  the  feminine 
spirit  has  desired. 

In  savage  life  as  well  as  in  barbarism  and 
civilization  has  woman's  instinctive  lu'ge  to 
freedom  and  a  wider  development  asserted  it- 
self in  an  effort,  successful  or  otherwise,  to 
curtail  her  family. 

"  The  custom  of  infanticide  prevails  or  has 
prevailed,"  says  Westermarck  in  his  monu- 
mental work.  The  Origin  and  Development 
of  the  Moral  Idea,  "  not  only  in  the  savage 
world  but  among  the  semi-civilized  and  civil- 
ized races." 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      13 

With  the  savage  mother,  family  limitation 
ran  largely  to  infanticide,  although  that  prac* 
tice  was  frequently  accompanied  by  abortion 
as  a  tribal  means.  As  McLennan  says  in  his 
••  Studies  in  Ancient  History,"  infanticide  was 
formerly  very  common  among  the  savages  of 
New  Zealand,  and  "  it  was  generally  perpe- 
trated by  the  mother."  He  notes  much  the 
same  state  of  affairs  among  the  primitive 
Australians,  except  that  abortion  was  also 
frequently  employed.  In  numerous  North 
American  Indian  tribes,  he  says,  infanticide 
and  abortion  were  not  uncommon,  and  the 
Indians  of  Central  America  were  found  by 
him  "  to  have  gone  to  extremes  in  the  use  of 
abortives." 

When  a  traveller  reproached  the  women  of 
one  of  the  South  American  Indian  tribes  for 
the  practice  of  infanticide,  McLennan  says 
he  was  met  by  the  retort,  "  Men  have  no  busi- 
ness to  meddle  with  women's  affairs." 

McLennan  ventures  the  opinion  that  the 
practice  of  abortion  so  widely  noted  among 
Indians  in  the  Western  Hemisphere,  "must 
have  supervened  on  a  practice  of  infanticide." 

Similar  practices  have  been  found  to  pre* 


14   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

frail  wherever  historians  have  dug  deep  into  the 
life  of  savage  people.  Infanticide,  at  least, 
was  practiced  by  African  tribes,  by  the  primi* 
tive  peoples  of  Japan,  India  and  Western 
Europe,  as  well  as  in  China,  and  in  early 
Greece  and  Rome.  The  ancient  Hebrews  are 
sometimes  pointed  out  as  the  one  possible 
exception  to  this  practice,  because  the  Mosaic 
law,  as  it  has  come  down  to  us,  is  silent  upon 
the  subject.  Westermarck  is  of  the  opinion 
that  it  "  hardly  occurred  among  the  Hebrews 
in  historic  times.  But  we  have  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  at  an  earlier  period,  among  them, 
as  among  other  branches  of  the  Semitic  race, 
child  murder  was  frequently  practiced  as  a 
sacrificial  rite/' 

Westermarck  found  that  "the  murder  of 
female  infants,  whether  by  the  direct  employ- 
ment of  homicidal  means,  or  exposure  to  priva- 
tion and  neglect,  has  for  ages  been  a  common 
practice  or  even  a  genuine  custom  among 
varioujs  Hindu  castes." 

Still  further  light  is  shed  upon  the  real 
sources  of  the  practice,  as  well  as  upon  the  im- 
provement of  the  status  of  woman  through 
jfche  practice,  by  an  English  student  of  condi- 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      U 

tions  in  India,  Captain  S.  Charles  Mac- 
Pherson,  of  the  Madras  Army,  in  the  Journal 
of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  for  1852,  said: 
*  I  can  here  hut  very  briefly  advert  to  the 
customs  and  feelings  which  the  practice  of  in- 
fanticide (among  the  Khonds  of  Orissa)  alter- 
nately springs  from  and  produces.  The  influ- 
ence and  privileges  of  women  are  exceedingly 
great  among  the  Khonds,  and  are,  I  believe, 
greatest  among  the  tribes  which  practice  infan- 
ticide. Their  opinions  have  great  weight  in 
all  public  and  private  affairs;  their  direct 
participation  is  often  considered  essential  in 
the  former,'* 

If  infanticide  did  not  spring  from  a  desire 
within  the  woman  herself,  from  a  desire 
stronger  than  motherhood,  would  it  prevail 
where  women  enjoy  an  influence  equal  to  that 
of  men  ?  And  does  not  the  fact  that  the  women 
in  question  do  enjoy  such  influence,  point  un- 
mistakably to  the  motive  beliind  the  practice? 

Infanticide  did  not  go  out  of  fashion  with 
the  advance  from  savagery  to  barbarism  and 
civilization.  Rather,  it  became,  as  in  Greece 
and  Rome,  a  recognized  custom  with  advo- 
cates among  leaders  of  thought  and  action. 


16    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

So  did  abortion,  which  some  authorities  regard 
as  a  development  springing  from  infanticide 
and  tending  to  supersede  it  as  a  means  of 
getting  rid  of  undesired  children. 

As  progress  is  made  toward  civilization,  in- 
fanticide, then,  actually  increased.  This  tend- 
ency was  noted  by  Westermarck,  who  also  calls 
attention  to  the  conclusions  of  Fison  and 
Howitt  (in  Kamilaroi  and  Kurnai).  "Mr. 
Fison  who  has  lived  for  a  long  time  among 
uncivilized  races,"  says  Westermarck,  "thinks 
it  will  be  found  that  infanticide  is  far  less  com- 
mon among  the  lower  savages  than  among  the 
more  advanced  tribes." 

Following  this  same  tendency  into  civilized 
coimtries,  we  find  infanticide  either  advocated 
by  philosophers  and  authorized  by  law,  as  in 
Greece  and  Rome,  or  widely  practiced  in  spite 
of  the  law,  civil  and  ecclesiastical. 

The  status  of  infanticide  as  an  established, 
legalized  custom  in  Greece,  is  well  summed  up 
by  Westermarck,  who  says:  "The  exposure 
of  deformed  or  sickly  infants  was  undoubtedly 
an  ancient  custom  in  Greece;  in  Sparta,  at 
least,  it  was  enjoined  by  law.  It  was  also 
approved  of  by  the  most  enlightened  among 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      17 

the  Greek  philosophers.  Plato  condemns  aB 
those  children  who  are  imperfect  in  limbs  as 
well  as  those  who  are  born  of  depraved 
citizens/* 

Aristotle,  who  believed  that  the  state  should 
fix  the  nmnber  of  children  each  married  pair 
should  have,  has  this  to  say  in  Politics^  Book 
yil.  Chapter  V: 

"  With  respect  to  the  exposing  and  nurtur- 
ing of  children,  let  it  be  a  law  that  nothing 
mutilated  shall  be  nurtured.  And  in  order 
to  avoid  having  too  great  a  number  of  chil- 
dren, if  it  be  not  permitted  by  the  laws  of  the 
coimtry  to  expose  them,  it  is  then  requisite  to 
define  how  many  a  man  may  have ;  and  if  any 
have  more  than  the  prescribed  number,  some 
means  must  be  adopted  that  the  fruit  be 
destroyed  in  the  womb  of  the  mother  before 
sense  and  life  are  generated  in  it." 

Aristotle  was  a  conscious  advocate  of  family 
limitation  even  if  attained  by  violent  means. 
"  It  is  necessary,"  he  says,  "  to  take  care  that 
tiie  increase  of  the  people  should  not  exceed  a 
certain  number  in  order  to  avoid  poverty  and 
its  concomitants,  sedition  and  other  evils." 

In  Athens,  while  the  citizen  wives  were 


18    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

unable  to  throw  off  the  restrictions  of  the  laws 
which  kept  them  at  home,  the  great  number  of 
hetairas,  or  stranger  women,  were  the  glory  of 
the  "Golden  Age."  The  homes  of  these 
women  who  were  free  from  the  burden  of  too 
many  children  became  the  gathering-places  of 
philosophers,  poets,  sculptors  and  statesmen. 
The  hetairas  were  their  companions,  their  inspi- 
ration and  their  teachers.  Aspasia,  one  of  the 
greatest  women  of  antiquity,  was  such  an 
emancipated  individuality.  True  to  the  urge 
of  the  feminine  spirit,  she,  like  Sappho,  the 
poetess  of  Lesbos,  sought  to  arouse  the  Greek 
wives  to  the  expression  of  their  individual 
selves.  One  writer  h^js  of  her  efforts:  "This 
woman  determined  to  do  her  utmost  to  elevate 
her  sex.  The  one  method  of  culture  open  to 
women  at  that  time  was  poetry.  There  was 
no  other  form  of  literature,  and  accordingly 
she  systematically  trained  her  pupils  to  be 
poets,  and  to  weave  into  the  verse  the  noblest 
maxims  of  the  intellect  and  the  deepest  emo- 
tions of  the  heart.  Young  pupils  with  richly 
endowed  minds  flocked  to  her  from  all 
countries  and  formed  a  kind  -^f  Woman's 
College. 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      19 

"  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  these  young 
women  were  impelled  to  seek  the  society  of 
Sappho  from  disgust  with  the  low  drudgery 
and  monotonous  routine  to  which  woman's  life 
was  sacrificed,  and  they  were  anxious  to  rise 
to  something  nobler  and  better." 

Can  there  be  any  doubt  that  the  unfortu-* 
nate  "  citizen  wives  "  of  Athens,  bound  by  law 
to  their  homes,  envied  the  brilliant  .careers  of 
the  "  stranger  women,"  and  sought  all  pos- 
sible means  of  freedom?  And  can  there  be  any 
doubt  that  they  acquiesced  in  the  practice  of 
infanticide  as  a  means  to  that  end?  Other* 
wise,  how  could  the  custom  of  destroying  in- 
fants have  been  so  thoroughly  embedded  in 
the  jurisprudence,  the  thought  and  the  very 
core  of  Athenian  civilization? 

As  to  the  Spartan  women,  Aristotle  says 
that  they  ruled  their  husbands  and  owned  two- 
fifths  of  the  land.  Surely,  had  they  not  ap- 
proved of  infanticide  for  some  very  strong 
reasons  of  their  own,  they  would  have 
abolished  it. 

Athens  and  Sparta  must  be  regarded  as 
giving  very  strong  indications  that  the  Grecian 
women  not  only  approved  of  family  limitation 


20   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

by  the  destruction  of  unwanted  children,  but 
that  at  least  part  of  their  motive  was  personal 
freedom. 

In  Rome,  an  avowedly  militaristic  nation, 
living  by  conquest  of  weaker  states,  all  sound 
children  were  saved.  But  the  weakly  or  de- 
formed were  drowned.  Says  Seneca:  "We 
destroy  monstrous  births,  and  we  also  drown 
our  children  if  they  are  born  weakly  or 
unnaturally  formed."  Wives  of  Romans, 
however,  were  relieved  of  much  of  the 
drudgery  of  child  rearing  by  the  slaves  which 
Rome  took  by  the  thousands  and  brought 
home.  Thus  they  were  fr^.,  to  attain  an  ad- 
vanced position  and  to  become  the  advisors  of 
their  husbands  in  politics,  making  and  immak- 
ing  political  careers. 

When  we  come  to  look  into  the  proverbial 
infanticide  of  the  Chinese,  we  find  the  same 
positive  indications  that  it  grew  out  of  the 
instinctive  purpose  of  woman  to  free  herself 
from  the  bondage  of  too  great  reproductivity. 

"  In  the  poorest  districts  of  China,"  says 
Westermark,  "  female  infants  are  often 
destroyed  by  their  parents  immediately  after 
their  birtlv  chiefly  on  account  of  poverty* 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      21 

Though  disapproved  of  by  educated  Chinese, 
the  practice  is  treated  with  forebearance  or 
indiflference  by  the  man  of  the  people  and  is 
acquiesced  in  by  the  mandarins." 

"  When  seriously  appealed  to  on  the  sub- 
ject," says  the  Rev.  J.  Doolittle  in  Social  Life 
of  the  Chinese  J  "  though  all  deprecate  it  as 
contrary  to  the  dictates  of  reason  and  the  in- 
stincts of  nature,  many  are  ready  boldly  to 
apologize  for  it  and  declare  it  to  be  necessary, 
especially  in  the  families  of  the  excessively 
poor." 

Here  again  the  wide  prevalence  of  the  cus- 
tom is  the  first  and  best  proof  that  women  are 
driven  by  some  great  pressure  within  them- 
selves to  accede  to  it.  If  further  proof  were 
necessary,  it  is  afforded  by  the  testimony  of 
Occidentals  who  have  lived  in  China,  that 
Chinese  midwives  are  extremely  skillful  in  pro- 
ducing early  abortion.  Abortions  are  not  per- 
formed without  the  consent  and  usually  only 
at  the  demand  of  the  woman. 

In  Cliina,  as  in  India,  the  religions  of  the 
coimtry  condemned,  even  as  they  to-day  con- 
denm,  infanticide.  Both  foreign  and  native 
Igovemments  have  sought  to  make  an  end  of 


22   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

the  custom.  But  in  both  countries  it  still 
prevails.  Nor  are  these  Eastern  countries 
substantially  different  from  their  Western 
neighbors. 

The  record  of  Western  Europe  is  sum- 
marized by  Oscar  Helmuth  Werner,  Ph.D., 
in  his  book,  ''  The  Unmarried  Mother  in 
German  Literature f  ''  Infanticide,"  says 
Dr.  Werner,  "  was  the  most  common  crime  in 
Western  Europe  from  the  Middle  Ages  down 
to  the  end  of  the  Eighteenth  Century."  This 
fact,  of  course,  means  that  it  was  even  more 
largely  practiced  by  the  married  than  the  un- 
married, the  married  mothers  being  far  greater 
in  number. 

"Another  problem  which  confronted  the 
church,"  he  says  in  another  place,  "  was  the 
practice  of  exposure  and  killing  of  children 
by  legal  parents."  A  sort  of  final  word  from 
Dr.  Werner  is  this :  "  Infanticide  by  legal 
parents  has  practically  ceased  in  civilized 
countries,  but  abortion,  its  substitute,  has  not." 

How  desperately  woman  desired  freedom 
to  develop  herself  as  an  individual,  apart  from 
motherhood,  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  in- 
fanticide was  "  the  most  common  crime  of 


STRUGGLE   FOR  FREEDOM       2^ 

Western  Europe,"  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
some  of  the  most  terrible  punishments  ever 
inflicted  by  law  were  meted  out  to  those  women 
who  sought  this  means  of  escape  from  the 
burden  of  unwanted  children.  Dr,  Werner 
shows  that  in  Germany,  for  instance,  in  the 
year  1532,  it  was  the  law  that  those  guilty  of 
infanticide  were  "  to  be  buried  alive  or  im- 
paled. In  order  to  prevent  desperation,  how- 
ever, they  shall  be  drowned  if  it  is  possible  to 
get  to  a  stream  or  river,  in  which  they  shall  be 
torn  with  glowing  tongs  beforehand." 

Notwithstanding  the  fact  tliat  at  one  time  in 
Germany,  the  punishment  was  that  of  drown- 
ing in  a  sack  containing  a  serpent,  a  cat  and 
a  dog  —  in  order  that  the  utmost  agony  might 
be  inflicted  —  one  sovereign  alone  condemned 
20,000  women  to  death  for  infanticide,  without 
noticeably  reducing  the  practice. 

To-day,  in  spite  of  the  huge  numbers  of 
abortions  and  the  multiplication  of  foundlings' 
homes  and  orphans'  asylums,  infanticide  is  still 
an  occasional  crime  in  all  countries.  As  to 
woman's  share  in  the  practice,  let  us  add  this 
word  from  Havelock  Ellis,  taken  from  the 


24    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

chapter  on  "  Morbid  Psychic  Phenomena  '* 
in  his  book,  Man  and  Woman: 

"  Infanticide  is  the  crime  in  which  women 
stand  out  in  the  greatest  contrast  to  men;  in 
Italy,  for  example,  for  every  100  men  guilty 
of  infanticide,  there  are  477  women."  And  he 
remarks  later  that  when  a  man  commits  this 
crime,  "  he  usually  'does  it  at  the  instance  of 
some  woman." 

Infanticide  tends  to  disappear  as  skill  in 
producing  abortions  is  developed  or  knowledge 
of  contraceptives  is  spread,  and  only  then. 
One  authority,  as  will  be  seen  in  a  later  chap- 
ter, estimates  the  number  of  abortions  per- 
formed annually  in  the  United  States  at 
1,000,000,  and  another  believes  that  double 
that  number  are  produced, 

"Among  the  Hindus  and  Mohammedans, 
artificial  abortion  is  extremely  common,"  says 
Westermark.  "  In  Persia  every  illegitimate 
pregnancy  ends  with  abortion.  In  Turkey, 
botk  among  the  rich  and  the  poor,  even 
married  women  very  commonly  procure  abor- 
tion after  they  have  given  birth  to  two  chil- 
dren, one  of  which  is  a  boy." 

The  nations  mentioned  are  typical  of  the 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      23 

world,  except  those  countries  where  informa* 
tion  concerning  contraceptives  has  enabled 
women  to  limit  their  families  without  recourse 
to  operations. 

It  is  apparent  that  nothing  short  of  contra* 
ceptives  can  put  an  end  to  the  horrors  of  abor- 
tion and  infanticide.  The  Roman  Catholic 
church,  which  has  fought  these  practices  from 
the  beginning,  has  been  unable  to  check  them; 
and  no  more  powerful  agency  could  have  been 
brought  into  play.  It  took  th^t  church,  even 
in  the  days  of  its  unlimited  power,  many  cen- 
turies to  come  to  its  present  sweeping  condem- 
nation of  abortion.  The  severity  of  the  con- 
demnation depended  upon  the  time  at  which 
the  development  of  the  foetus  was  interfered 
with.  An  illimiinating  resume  of  the  church's 
efforts  in  this  direction  is  given  by  Dr.  William 
Burke  Ryan  in  his  authoritative  and  exhaus- 
tive study  entitled  ''  Infanticide;  Its  Law, 
Prevalence^  Prevention  and  History/'  Dr. 
Ryan  says:  "Theologian^  of  the  chmxh  of 
Rome  made  a  distinction  between  the  inani- 
mate and  the  animate  foetus  to  which  the  soul 
IS  added  by  the  creation  of  God,  and  adopted 
the  opinions  of  some  of  the  old  philosophers. 


26   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

more  particularly  those  of  Aristotle,  as  to  ani« 
mation  in  the  male  and  female,  but  the  canon 
law  altogether  negatived  the  doctrine  of  the 
Stoics,  for  Innocent  II  condemned  the  follow- 
ing proposition: 

" '  It  seems  probable  that  the  foetus  does 
not  possess  a  rational  soul  as  long  a:  it  is  in 
the  womb,  and  only  begins  to  possess  it  when 
born,  and  consequently  in  no  abortion  is  homi- 
cide committed.'  Sextus  V  inflicted  severe 
penalties  for  the  crime  of  aborti  n  at  any 
period;  these  were  in  some  degree  mitigated 
by  Gregory  XIV,  who,  however,  still  held  that 
those  producing  the  abortion  of  an  animated 
foetus  should  be  subject  to  them,  viz.,  and 
excommunication  reserved  to  the  bishop  and 
also  an  'irregularity*  reserved  to  the  Pope 
himself  for  absolution." 

To-day,  the  Roman  church  stands  firmly 
upon  the  proposition  that  "  directly  in- 
tended, artificial  abortion  must  be  regarded  as 
wrongful  killing,  as  murder."*  But  it  re- 
quired a  long  time  for  i'u  to  reach  that  point, 
in  the  face  of  the  demand  for  relief  from  large 
families. 

•Pastoral  Medicine, 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      27 

As  it  was  with  the  fight  of  the  church  against 
abortion,  so  it  is  with  the  effort  to  prevent 
abortion  in  the  United  States  to-day.  All 
efforts  to  stop  the  practice  are  futile.  Ap» 
parently,  the  numbers  of  these  illegal  opera* 
tions  are  increasing  from  year  to  year.  From 
year  to  year  more  women  will  undergo  the 
humiliation,  the  danger  and  the  horror  of  theme 
and  the  terrible  record,  begun  with  the  in* 
fanticide  of  the  primitive  peoples,  will  go  on 
piling  up  its  volume  of  human  misery  and 
racial  damage,  until  society  awakens  to  the 
fact  that  a  fundamental  remedy  must  he 
applied. 

To  apply  such  a  remedy,  society  must 
recognize  the  terrible  lesson  taught  by  the  in- 
numerable centuries  of  infanticide  and  foeti- 
cide. If  these  abhorrent  practices  could  have 
been  ended  by  punishment  and  suppression, 
they  would  have  ceased  long  ago.  But  to  con- 
tinue suppression  and  punishment,  and  let  the 
matter  rest  there,  is  only  to  miss  the  lesson  — * 
only  to  permit  conditions  to  go  from  bad  ta 
worse. 

What  is  that  lesson?  It  is  this:  woman's 
Sesire  for  freedom  is  bom  of  the  feminine 


28   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

spirit,  which  fs  the  absolute,  elemental,  inner 
fifge  of  womanhood.  It  is  the  strongest  force 
in  her  nature;  it  cannot  be  destroyed;  it  can 
merely  be  diverted  from  its  natural  expression 
into  violent  and  destructive  channels. 

The  chief  obstacles  to  the  normal  expression 
of  this  force  are  imdesired  pregnancy  and  the 
burden  of  unwanted  children.  These  obstacles 
have  always  been  and  always  will  be  swept 
aside  by  a  considerable  proportion  of  women. 
Driven  by  the  irresistible  force  within  them, 
they  will  always  seek  wider  freedom  and 
greater  self-development,  regardless  of  the 
cost.  The  sole  question  that  society  has  to 
answer  is,  how  shall  women  be  permitted  to 
attain  this  end? 

Are  you  horrified  at  the  record  set  down  in 
this  chapter?  It  is  well  that  you  should  be. 
You  cannot  help  society  to  apply  the  funda- 
mental remedy  unless  you  know  these  facts 
and  are  conscious  of  their  fullest  significance. 

Society,  in  dealing  with  the  feminine  spirit, 
has  its  choice  of  clearly  defined  alternatives. 
It  can  continue  to  resort  to  violence  in  an  effort 
to  enslave  the  elemental  urge  of  womanhood, 
making  of  woman  a  mere  instrument  of  repro* 


STRUGGLE  FOR  FREEDOM      29 

duction  and  punishing  her  when  she  revolts. 
Or,  it  can  permit  her  to  choose  whether  she 
fihall  become  a  mother  and  how  many  children 
she  will  havee  It  can  go  on  trying  to  crush 
that  which  is  uncrushable,  or  it  can  recognize 
woman's  claim  to  freedom,  and  cease  to  impose 
diverting  and  destructive  barriers.  If  we 
choose  the  latter  course,  we  must  not  only  re- 
move all  restrictions  upon  the  use  of  scientific 
contraceptives,  but  we  must  legalize  and 
encourage  their  use. 

This  problem  comes  home  with  peculiar 
force  to  the  people  of  America.  Do  we  want 
the  millions  of  abortions  performed  annually 
to  be  multiplied?  Do  we  want  the  precious, 
tender  qualities  of  womanhood,  so  much 
needed  for  our  racial  development,  to  perish 
in  these  sordid,  abnormal  experiences?  Or,  do 
we  wish  to  permit  woman  to  find  her  way  to 
fundamental  freedom  through  safe,  unobjec* 
tionable,  scientific  means?  We  have  our 
choice.  Upon  our  answer  to  these  questions 
depends  in  a  tremendous  degree  the  character 
and  the  capabilities  of  the  future  American 
race. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  MATERIALS  OF  THE  NEW  RACE 

EACH  of  US  has  an  ideal  of  what  the 
American  of  the  future  should  be.  We 
have  been  told  times  without  number  that  out 
of  the  mixture  of  stocks,  the  intermingling  of 
ideas  and  aspirations,  there  is  tc  come  a  race 
greater  than  any  which  has  contributed  to  the 
population  of  the  United  States,  What  is  the 
basis  for  this  hope  that  is  so  generally  indulged 
in?  If  the  hope  is  founded  upon  realities,  how 
may  it  be  realized?  To  understand  the  diffi* 
culties  and  the  obstacles  to  be  overcome  before 
the  dream  of  a  greater  race  in  America  can  be 
attained,  is  to  understand  something  of  the 
task  before  the  women  who  shall  give  birth  to 
that  race. 

What  material  is  there  for  a  greater  Ainer* 
ican  race?  What  elements  make  up  our 
present  millions?  Where  do  they  live?  How 
do  they  live?  In  what  direction  does  our 
national  civilization  bend  their  ideals?    What 

30 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE     31 

is  the  effect  of  the  "melting  pot"  upon  the 
foreigner,  once  he  begins  to  "  melt "  ?  Are 
we  now  producing  a  freer,  juster,  more  intel- 
ligent, more  idealistic,  creative  people  out  of 
the  varied  ingredients  here? 

Before  we  can  answer  these  questions,  we 
must  consider  briefly  the  races  which  have  con- 
tributed to  American  population. 

Among  our  more  than  100,000,000  popula- 
tion are  Negroes,  Indians,  Chinese  and  other 
colored  people  to  the  number  of  11,000,000. 
There  are  also  14,500,000  persons  of  foreign 
birth.  Besides  these  there  are  14,000,000  chil- 
dren of  foreign-born  parents  and  6,500,000 
persons  whose  fathers  or  mothers  were  born 
on  foreign  soil,  making  a  total  of  46,000,000 
people  of  foreign  stock.  Fifty  per  cent  of 
our  population  is  of  the  native  white  strain. 

Of  the  foreign  stock  in  the  United  States, 
the  last  general  census,  compiled  in  1910, 
shows  that  25.7  per  cent  was  German,  14  per 
cent  was  Irish,  8.5  per  cent  was  Russian  or 
Finnisli,  7.2  was  English,  6,5  per  cent  Italian 
and  6.2  per  cent  Austrian.  The  Abstract  of 
the  same  census  points  cut  several  significant 
facts.    The  Western  European  strains  in  this 


32    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

country  are  represented  by  a  majority  of 
native-bom  children  of  foreign-born  or  mixed 
parentage.  This  is  because  the  immigration 
from  those  sources  has  been  checked.  On  the 
other  hand,  immigration  from  Southern  and 
Eastern  Europe,  including  Russia  and  Fin- 
land, increased  175.4  per  cent  from  1900  to 
1910.  During  that  period,  the  slums  of 
Europe  dumped  their  submerged  inhabitants 
into  America  at  a  rate  almost  double  that  of 
the  preceding  decade,  and  the  flow  was  still 
increasing  at  the  time  the  census  was  taken. 
So  it  is  more  than  likely  that  when  the  next 
census  is  taken  it  will  be  found  that  following 
1910  there  was  an  even  greater  flow  from 
Spain,  Italy,  Hungary,  Austria,  Russia,  Fin- 
land, and  other  countries  where  the  iron  hand 
of  economic  and  political  tyrannies  had 
crushed  great  populations  into  ignorance  and 
want.  These  peoples  have  not  been  in  the 
United  States  long  enough  to  produce  great 
families.  The  census  of  1920  will  in  all  prob- 
ability tell  a  story  of  a  greater  and  more 
serious  problem  than  did  the  last. 

Over  one-foiu-th  of  all  the  immigrants  over 
fourteen  years  of  age,  admitted  during  the  two 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE      33 

decades  preceding  1910,  were  illiterate.  Of 
the  8,398,000  who  arrived  in  the  1900-1910 
period,  2,238,000  could  not  reaa  or  write. 
There  were  1,600,000  illiterate  foreigners  in 
the  United  States  when  the  1910  census  was 
taken.  Do  these  elements  give  promise  of  a 
better  race?  Are  we  doing  anything  gen- 
uinely constructive  to  overcome  this  situation? 

Two-thirds  of  the  white  foreign  stock  in  the 
United  States  live  in  cities.  Four-fifths  of  the 
populations  of  Chicago  and  New  York  are  of 
this  stock.  More  than  two-thirds  of  the  popu* 
lations  of  Boston,  Cleveland,  Detroit,  Buffalo, 
Pittsburgh,  Milwaukee,  Newark,  Jersey  City, 
Providence,  Worcester,  Scranton,  Paterson, 
Fall  River,  Lowell,  Cambridge,  Bridgeport, 
St.  Paul,  Minneapohs  and  San  Francisco  are 
of  other  than  native  white  ancestry.  Of  the 
fifty  principal  cities  of  the  United  States  there 
are  only  fourteen  in  which  fifty  per  cent  of  the 
population  is  of  unmixed  native  white 
parentage. 

Only  one  state  in  the  Union  —  North  Caro- 
lina—  has  less  than  one  per  cent  of  the  white 
foreign  stock.  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Dela- 
ware,    Massachusetts,     Connecticut,     Rhode 


34   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

Islandj  Michigan,  Illinois,  Wisconsin,  Minne* 
sota,  the  Dakotas,  Montana  and  Utah  have 
more  than  fifty  per  cent  foreign  stock.  Eleven 
states,  including  those  on  the  Pacific  Coast, 
have  from  35  to  50  per  cent.  Maine,  Ohio 
and  Kansas  have  from  25  to  35  per  cent. 
Maryland,  Indiana,  Missouri  and  Texas  have 
from  15  to  25  per  cent.  These  proportions 
are  increasing  rather  tiian  decreasing,  owing 
to  the  extraordinarily  high  birth  rate  of  the 
foreign  strains. 

A  special  analysis  of  1915  vital  statistics  for 
certain  states,  in  the  World  Almanac  for  1918, 
shows  that  foreign-born  mothers  gave  birth  to 
nearly  62  per  cent  of  the  children  born  in  Con- 
necticut, nearly  58  per  cent  in  Massachusetts, 
nearly  33  per  cent  in  Michigan,  nearly  5S  per 
cent  in  Khode  Island,  more  than  43  per  cent 
in  New  Hampshire,  more  than  54  per  cent  in 
New  York  and  more  than  38  per  cent  in 
Pennsylvania. 

All  these  figures,  be  it  remembered,  fail  to 
include  foreign  stock  of  the  second  generation 
after  landing.  If  the  statistics  for  children 
who  have  native  parents  but  foreign-borij 
grandparents,  or  who  have  one  foreign-borH 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE      35 

parent,  were  given,  they  would  doubtless  leave 
but  a  small  percentage  of  births  from  stocks 
native  to  the  soil  for  several  generations. 

Immigrants  or  their  children  constitute  the 
majority  of  workers  employed  in  many  of  our 
industries.  "  Seven  out  of  ten  of  those  who 
work  in  our  iron  and  steel  industries  are  drawn 
from  this  class,"  saj'^s  the  National  Geographic 
Magazine  (February,  1917),  "seven  out  of 
ten  of  our  bituminous  coal  miners  belong  to  it. 
Three  out  of  four  who  work  in  packing  towns 
were  born  abroad  or  are  children  of  those  who 
were  borr  abroad;  four  out  of  five  of  those 
who  make  our  silk  goods,  seven  out  of  eight 
of  those  employed  in  woolen  mills,  nine  out  of 
ten  of  those  who  refine  our  petroleum,  and 
nineteen  out  of  twenty  of  those  who  manufac- 
ture our  sugar  are  immigrants  or  the  children 
of  immigrants."  And  it  might  have  shown  a 
similarly  high  percentage  of  those  in  the  ready- 
made  clothing  industries,  railway  and  public 
works  construction  of  the  less  skilled  sort,  and 
a  number  of  others. 

Tliat  these  foreigners  who  have  come  in 
hordes  have  brought  with  them  their  ignorance 
of  hygiene  and  modern  ways  of  living  and  that 


36   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  KACE 

they  are  handicapped  by  religious  supersti- 
tions is  only  too  true.  But  they  also  bring 
in  their  hearts  a  desire  for  freedom  from  all 
the  tyrannies  that  afflict  the  earth.  They 
would  not  be  here  if  they  did  not  bear  within 
them  the  hardihood  of  pioneers,  a  courage  of 
no  mean  order.  They  have  the  simple  faith 
that  in  America  they  will  find  equality,  liberty 
and  an  opportunity  for  a  decent  livelihood. 
And  they  have  something  else.  The  cell 
plasms  of  these  peoples  are  freighted  with  the 
potentialities  of  the  best  in  Old  World  civiliza- 
tion. They  come  from  lands  rich  in  the  tradi- 
tions of  courage,  of  art,  music,  letters,  science 
and  philosophy.  Americans  no  longer  con- 
sider themselves  cultured  unless  they  have 
journeyed  to  these  lands  to  find  access  to  the 
treasures  created  by  men  and  women  of  this 
same  blood.  The  immigrant  brings  the  pos- 
sibilities of  all  these  things  to  our  shores,  but 
where  is  the  opportunity  to  reproduce  in  the 
New  World  the  cultures  of  the  old? 

What  opportunities  have  we  given  to  these 
peoples  to  enrich  our  civilization?  We  have 
greeted  them  as  "  a  lot  of  ignorant  foreigners,** 
we  have  shouted  at,  bustled  and  kicked  them. 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  KACE     37 

Our  industries  have  taken  advantage  of  their 
ignorance  of  the  country's  ways  to  take  their 
toil  in  mills  and  mines  and  factories  at  starva- 
tion wages.  We  have  herded  them  into  slums 
to  become  diseased,  to  become  social  burdens 
or  to  die.  We  have  huddled  them  together 
like  rabbits  to  multiply  their  numbers  and  their 
misery.  Instead  of  saying  that  we  Ameri- 
canize them,  we  should  confess  that  we 
animalize  them.  The  only  freedom  we  seem 
to  have  given  them  is  the  freedom  to  make 
heavier  and  more  secure  their  chains.  What 
hope  is  there  for  racial  progress  in  this  human 
material,  treated  more  carelessly  and  brutally 
than  the  cheapest  factory  product? 

Nor  are  all  om*  social  handicaps  bound  up  in 
the  immigrant. 

There  were  in  the  United  States,  when  the 
Federal  Industrial  Relations  Committee 
finished  its  work  in  1915,  several  million  migra- 
tory workers,  most  of  them  w^hite,  many  of 
them  married  but  separated  from  their  fam- 
ilies, who  were  compelled,  like  themselves,  to 
struggle  with  dire  want. 

There  were  in  1910  more  than  2,353,000 
lenant  farmers,  two-thirds  of  whom  lived  tod 


38   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

worked  under  the  terrible  conditions  which  the 
Industrial  Relations  Commission's  report 
showed  to  prevail  in  the  South  and  Southwest. 
These  tenant  farmers^  as  the  report  showed, 
were  always  in  want,  and  were  compelled  by 
the  very  terms  of  the  prevailing  tenant  con- 
tracts to  produce  children  who  must  go  to  the 
fields  and  do  the  work  of  adults.  The  census 
proved  that  this  tenancy  was  on  the  increase, 
the  number  of  tenants  in  all  but  the  New  Eng- 
land and  Middle  Atlantic  States  having  in- 
creased approximately  30  per  cent  from  1900 
to  1910. 

Moreover,  there  were  in  the  United  States 
in  1910,  5,516,163  illiterates.  Of  these 
1,378,884  were  of  pure  native  white  stock.  In 
some  states  in  the  South  as  much  as  29  per  cent 
of  the  population  is  illiterate,  many  of  these, 
of  course,  being  Negroes. 

There  is  still  another  factor  to  be  considered 
—  a  factor  which  because  of  its  great  scope  is 
more  ominous  than  any  yet  mentioned.  This 
is  the  imderpaid  mass  of  workers  in  the  United 
States  —  workers  whose  low  wages  are  forcing 
them  deeper  into  want  each  day.  Let  Senator 
Borah,  not  a  radical  nor  even  a  reformer,  but 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE     39 

a  leader  of  the  Republican  party,  tell  the  story. 
"  Fifty-seven  per  cent  of  the  families  in  the 
United  States  have  incomes  of  $800  or  less," 
said  he  in  a  speech  before  the  Senate,  August 
24, 1917,  "  Seventy  per  cent  of  the  families  of 
our  country  have  incomes  of  $1^000  or  less. 
Tell  me  how  a  man  so  situated  can  have  shelter 
for  his  family;  how  he  can  provide  food  and 
clothing.  He  is  an  industrial  peon.  His  home 
is  scant  and  pinched  beyond  the  power  of 
language  to  tell.  He  sees  his  wife  and  chil- 
dren on  the  ragged  edge  of  hunger  from  week 
to  week  and  month  to  month.  If  sickness 
comes,  he  faces  suicide  or  crime.  He  cannot 
educate  his  children;  he  cannot  fit  them  for 
Citizenship  I  he  cannot  even  fit  them  as  soldiers 
to  die  for  their  country. 

"  It  ii)  the  tragedy  of  our  whole  national  life 
■ —  how  these  people  live  in  such  times  as  these. 
We  have  not  yet  gathered  the  fruits  of  such 
an  industrial  condition  in  this  country.  We 
have  been  saved  thus  far  by  reason  of  the  new- 
ness of  our  national  life,  our  vast  public  lands 
now  almost  exhausted,  our  great  natural  re- 
sources now  fast  being  seized  and  held,  but  the 
hour  of  reckoning  will  come." 


40   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

Senator  Borah  was  thinking,  doubtless,  of 
open  revolution,  of  bloodshed  and  the  destruc- 
tion  of  property.  In  a  far  more  terrible  sense, 
the  reckoning  which  he  has  referred  to  is  al- 
ready upon  us.  The  ills  we  suffer  as  the  result 
of  the  conditions  now  prevailing  in  the  United 
States  are  appalling  in  their  sum. 

It  is  these  conditions  that  produce  the 
3,000,000  child  laborers  of  the  United  States; 
child  slaves  who  undergo  hardships  that  blight 
them  physically  and  mentally,  leaving  them  fit 
only  to  produce  human  beings  whose  deficien* 
cies  and  misfortunes  will  exceed  their  own. 

From  these  same  elements,  living  under 
these  same  conditions  come  the  feebleminded 
and  other  defectives.  Just  how  many  feeble- 
minded there  are  in  the  United  States,  no  one 
knows,  because  no  attempt  has  ever  been  made 
to  give  public  care  to  all  of  them.,  and  families 
are  more  inchned  to  conceal  than  to  reveal  the 
mental  defects  of  their  members.  Estimates 
vary  from  350,000  at  the  present  time  to  nearly 
400,000  as  early  as  1890,  Henry  H.  Goddard, 
Ph.  D.,  of  the  Vineland,  N.  J.,  Training 
School,  being  authority  for  the  latter  state* 
ment.  Only  34,137  of  these  unfortunates  were 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE     41 

under  institutional  care  in  the  United  States 
in  1916,  the  rest  being  free  to  propagate  their 
kind  —  piling  up  public  burdens  for  future 
generations.  The  feebleminded  are  notori- 
ously prolific  in  reproduction.  The  close  rela- 
tionship between  poverty  and  ignorance  and 
the  production  of  feebleminded  is  shown  by 
Anne  Moore,  Ph.  D.,  in  a  report  to  the  Public 
Education  Association  of  New  York  in  1911. 
She  found  that  an  overwhelming  proportion 
of  the  classified  feebleminded  children  in  New 
York  schools  came  from  large  families  living 
in  overcrowded  slum  conditions,  and  that  only 
a  small  percentage  were  born  of  native  parents. 

Sixty  thousand  prostitutes  go  and  come 
anew  each  year  in  the  United  States.  This 
army  of  unfortunates,  as  social  workers  and 
scientists  testify,  come  from  families  living 
under  like  conditions  of  want. 

In  the  New  York  City  schools  alone  in  De- 
cember, 1916,  61  per  cent  of  the  children  were 
suffering  from  undernourishment  and  21  per 
cent  in  immediate  danger  of  it.  These  facts, 
also  the  result  of  the  conditions  outlined,  were 
(discovered  by  the  city  Bureau  of  jCbildi 
Hygiene, 


42   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  HACE 

Another  item  in  the  sordid  list  is  that  oi 
venereal  disease.  In  his  pamphlet  entitled 
*'  The  Venereal  Diseases,''  issued  in  1918,  Dr. 
Hermann  M.  Biggs  head  of  the  New  York 
State  Department  of  Health  quoted  authori- 
ties who  gave  estimates  of  the  amount  of  syphi- 
lis and  gonorrhea  in  the  United  States.  One 
says  that  60  per  cent  of  the  men  contract  one 
disease  or  the  other  at  some  time.  Another 
said  that  40  per  cent  of  the  population  of  New 
York  City  had  syphilis,  one  of  the  most  terrible 
of  all  maladies.  Poverty,  delayed  marriage, 
prostitution  —  a  brief  and  terrible  chain  ae« 
counts  for  this  scourge. 

Finally,  there  is  tuberculosis,  bred  by  bad 
housing  conditions  and  contributed  to  in 
frightful  measm'e  by  poor  food  and  unliealthy 
surroundings  during  the  hours  of  employment. 
Dr.  Frederick  L.  Hoffman,  director  of  the 
National  Association  for  the  Study  and  Pre- 
vention of  Tuberculosis  and  foremost  statis- 
tical authority  upon  tuberculosis  in  the  United 
States,  says:  "  We  know  of  2,000,000  tuber* 
cular  persons  in  the  United  States." 

Does  this  picture  horrify  the  reader?  This 
Is  not  the  whole  truth.    A  few  scattered  statis* 


MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE     43 

tics  lack  the  power  to  reflect  the  broken  lives 
of  overworked  fathers,  the  ceaseless,  increas- 
ing pain  of  overburdened  mothers  and  the 
agony  of  childliood  fighting  its  way  against 
the  handicaps  of  ill  health,  insufficient  food, 
inadequate  training  and  stifling  toil. 

Can  we  expect  to  remedy  this  situation  by 
dismissing  the  problem  of  the  submerged  na- 
tive elements  with  legislative  palliatives  or 
treating  it  with  careless  scorn?  Do  we  better 
it  by  driving  out  of  the  immigrant's  heart  the 
dream  of  liberty  that  brought  him  to  our 
shores?  Do  we  solve  the  problem  by  givmg 
him,  instead  of  an  opportunity  to  develop  his 
own  culture,  low  wages,  a  home  in  the  slums 
and  those  pseudo-patriotic  preachments  which 
constitute  our  machine-made  "  American- 
ization "  ? 

Everv  detail  of  this  sordid  situation  means 
a  problem  that  must  be  solved  before  we  can 
even  clear  the  way  for  a  greater  race  in 
America.  Nor  is  there  any  hope  of  solving  any 
of  these  problems  if  we  continue  to  attack 
them  in  the  usual  way. 

Men  have  sentimentalized  about  them  and 
legislated  upon  them.    They  have  denounced 


44   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  KACE 

them  and  they  have  ajpplied  reforms.  But  it 
has  all  been  ridiculously,  cruelly  futile. 

This  Is  the  condition  of  things  for  which 
those  stand  who  demand  more  and  more  chil- 
dren.  Each  child  born  under  such  conditions 
but  makes  them  worse  —  each  child  in  its  own 
person  suffers  the  consequence  of  the  intensi- 
fied evils. 

If  we  are  to  develop  in  America  a  new  race 
with  a  racial  soul,  we  must  keep  the  birth  rate 
within  the  scope  of  our  ability  to  imderstand 
as  well  as  to  educate.  We  must  not  encourage 
reproduction  beyond  our  capacity  to  assim- 
ilate our  numbers  so  as  to  make  the  coming 
generation  into  such  physically  fit,  mentally 
capable,  socially  alert  individuals  as  are  the 
ideal  of  a  democracy. 

The  intelligence  of  a  people  is  of  slow  evolu- 
tional development  —  it  lags  far  behind  the 
reproductive  ability.  It  is  far  too  slow  to  cope 
with  conditions  created  by  an  increasing  popu- 
lation, unless  that  increase  is  carefully 
regulated. 

We  must,  therefore,  not  permit  an  increase 
in  population  that  we  are  not  prepared  to  care 
for  to  the  best  advantage  —  that  we  are  not 


-  MATERIALS  OF  NEW  RACE     45 

prepared  to  do  justice  to,  educationally  and 
economically.  We  must  popularize  birth  con- 
trol thinking.  We  must  not  leave  it  hap- 
hazardly to  be  the  privilege  of  the  already 
privileged.  We  must  put  this  means  of  free- 
dom and  growth  into  the  hands  of  the  masses. 
We  must  set  motherhood  free.  We  must 
give  the  foreign  and  submerged  mother  knowl- 
edge that  will  enable  her  to  prevent  bringing 
to  birth  children  she  does  not  want.  We  know 
that  in  each  of  these  submerged  and  semisub- 
merged  elements  of  the  population  there  are 
rich  factors  of  racial  culture.  Motherhood  is 
the  channel  through  which  these  cultures  flow. 
Motherhood,  when  free  to  choose  the  father, 
free  to  choose  the  time  and  the  number  of 
children  who  shall  result  from  the  union,  auto- 
matically works  in  wondrous  ways.  It  re^ 
fuses  to  bring  forth  weaklings ;  refuses  to  bring 
forth  slaves ;  refuses  to  bear  children  who  must 
live  under  the  conditions  described.  It  with- 
holds the  imfit,  brings  forth  the  fit ;  brings  few 
diildren  into  homes  where  there  is  not  sufficient 
to  provide  for  them.  Instinctively  it  avoids 
all  those  things  which  multiply  racial  handi- 
caps.   Under  such  circimistances  we  can  hope 


46   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

that  the  "  melting  pot "  will  refine.  We  shall 
see  that  it  will  save  the  precious  metals 
of  racial  cultm^e,  fused  into  an  amalgam  of 
physical  perfection,  mental  strength  and 
spiritual  progress.  Such  an  American  race, 
containing  the  best  of  all  racial  elements,  could 
give  to  the  world  a  vision  and  a  leadership 
beyond  our  present  imagination. 


CHAPTER   IV 

TWO  CLASSES  OF  WOMEN 

THUS  far  we  have  been  discussing  mainly 
one  class  in  America  —  the  workers. 
Most  women  who  belong  to  the  workers* 
families  have  no  accurate  or  reliable  knowledge 
of  contraceptives,  and  are,  therefore,  bringing 
children  into  the  world  so  rapidly  that  they, 
their  families  and  their  class  are  overwhelmed 
with  numbers.  Out  of  these  numbers,  as  has 
been  shown,  have  grown  many  of  the  burdens 
with  which  society  in  general  is  weighted :  out 
of  them  have  come,  also,  the  want,  disease,  hard 
living  conditions  and  general  misery  of  the 
workers. 

The  women  of  this  class  are  the  greatest 
sufferers  of  all.  Not  only  do  they  bear  the  ma« 
terial  hardships  and  deprivations  in  common 
with  the  rest  of  the  family,  but  in  the  case  of 
the  mother,  these  are  intensified.  It  is  the  man 
and  the  child  who  have  first  call  upon  the  in* 
suffident  amoimt  of  food.    It  is  the  man  and 


48   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

the  child  who  get  the  recreation,  if  there  is  any 
to  be  had,  for  the  man's  hours  of  labor  are 
usually  limited  by  law  or  by  his  labor  imion. 

It  is  the  woman  who  suffers  first  from 
hunger,  the  woman  whose  clothing  is  least 
adequate,  the  woman  who  must  work  all  hours, 
even  though  she  is  not  compelled,  as  in  the  case 
of  millions,  to  go  into  a  factory  to  add  to  her 
husband's  scanty  income.  It  is  she,  too,  whose 
health  breaks  first  and  most  hopelessly,  imder 
the  long  hours  of  work,  the  drain  of  frequent 
ehildbearing,  and  often  almost  constant  nurs- 
ing of  babies.  There  are  no  eight-hour  laws 
to  protect  the  mother  against  overwork  and 
toil  in  the  home ;  no  laws  to  protect  her  against 
ill  health  and  the  diseases  of  pregnancy  and 
reproduction.  In  fact  there  has  been  almost 
no  thought  or  consideration  given  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  mother  in  the  home  of  the  work- 
ingman. 

There  are  no  general  health  statistics  to  tell 
the  full  story  of  the  physical  ills  suffered  by 
women  as  a  result  of  too  great  reproductivity. 
But  we  get  some  light  upon  conditions  through 
the  statistics  on  maternal  mortality,  compiled 
by  Dr.  Grace  L.  Meigs,  for  the  Children's 


TWO  CLASSES  OF  WOMEN    49 

Bureau  of  the  United  States  Department  of 
Labor.  These  figures  do  not  include  the 
deaths  of  women  suffering  from  diseases  com* 
plicated  by  pregnancy, 

"  In  1913,  in  this  country  at  least  15,000 
women,  it  is  estimated,  died  from  conditions 
caused  by  childbirth;  about  7,000  of  these  died 
from  childbed  fever  and  the  remaining  8,000 
from  diseases  now  known  to  be  to  a  great 
extent  preventable  or  cui^able,"  says  Dr.  Meigs 
in  her  summary,  "  Physicians  and  statisticians 
agree  that  these  figures  are  a  great  under' 
estimate,'^ 

Think  of  it  —  the  needless  deaths  of  15,000 
women  a  **  great  underestimate  "  !  Yet  even 
this  number  means  that  virtually  every  hour 
of  the  day  and  night  two  women  die  as  the 
result  of  childbirth  in  the  healthiest  and  sup- 
posedly the  most  progressive  country  in  the 
world. 

It  is  apparent  that  Dr.  Meigs  leaves  out  of 
consideration  the  many  thousands  of  deaths 
each  year  of  women  who  become  pregnant 
while  suffering  from  tuberculosis.  Dr.  S. 
Adolphus  Knopf,  addressing  the  forty-fourth 
annual  convention  of  the  American  Public 


so   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

Health  Association,  in  Cincinnati  in  1916, 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  some  authors 
hold  that  "  65  per  cent  of  the  women  afflicted 
with  tuberculosis,  even  when  afflicted  onlv  in 
the  relatively  early  and  curable  stages,  die  as 
the  result  of  pregnancy  which  could  have  been 
avoided  and  their  lives  saved  had  they  but 
known  some  means  of  prevention."  Nor  were 
syphilis,  various  kidney  and  heart  disorders 
and  other  diseases,  often  rendered  fatal  by 
pregnancy,  taken  into  account  by  Dr.  Meigs* 
survey. 

Still,  leaving  out  all  the  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  women  who  die  because  pregnancy 
has  complicated  serious  diseases.  Dr.  Meigs 
finds  that  "  in  1913,  the  death  rate  per  100,000 
of  the  population  from  all  conditions  caused 
by  childbirth  was  little  lower  than  that  from 
typhoid  fever.  This  rate  would  be  almost 
quadrupled  if  only  the  graup  of  the  popula- 
tion which  can  be  affected,  women  of  child- 
bearing  ages,  were  considered.  In  1913, 
childbirth  caused  more  deaths  among  women 
15  to  44j  years  old  than  any  disease  except 
tuberculosis." 

From  what  sort  of  homes  come  these  deaths 


TWO  CLASSES  OF  WOMEN    51 

from  childbirth?  Most  of  them  occur  in  over* 
crowded  dwellings,  where  food,  care,  sanita* 
tion,  nm^sing  and  medical  attention  are  inade- 
quate. Where  do  we  find  most  of  the  tubercu* 
losis  and  much  of  the  other  disease  which  is 
aggravated  by  pregnancy?  In  the  same  sort 
of  home* 

The  deadly  chain  of  misery  is  all  too  plain 
to  anyone  who  takes  the  trouble  to  observe  it. 
A  woman  of  the  working  class  marries  and 
with  her  husband  lives  in  a  degree  of  comfort 
upon  his  earnings.  Her  household  duties  are 
not  beyond  her  strength.  Then  the  children 
begin  to  come  —  one,  two,  three,  four,  pos- 
sibly five  or  more.  The  earnings  of  the  hus- 
band do  not  increase  as  rapidly  as  the  family 
does.  Food,  clothing  and  general  comfort  in 
the  home  grow  less  as  the  numbers  of  the 
family  increase.  The  woman's  work  grows 
heavier,  apd  her  strength  is  less  with  each 
child.  Possibly  —  probably  —  she  has  to  go 
into  a  factory  to  add  to  her  husband's  earn- 
ings. There  she  toils,  doing  her  housework  at 
night.  Her  health  goes,  and  the  crowded  con- 
ditions and  lack  of  necessities  in  the  home  help 
to  bring  about  disease  —  especially  tubercu* 


52   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

iosis.  Under  the  circumstances,  the  woman's 
chances  of  recovering  from  each  succeeding 
childbirth  grow  less.  Less  too  are  the  chances 
of  the  child's  surviving,  as  shown  by  tables  in 
another  chapter.  Unwanted  children,  poverty, 
ill  health,  misery,  death  —  these  are  the  links 
in  the  chain,  and  thev  are  common  to  most  of 
the  families  in  the  class  described  in  the  pre 
ceding  chapter. 

Nor  is  the  full  story  of  the  woman's  suffer 
ings  yet  told.  Grievous  as  is  her  material  con* 
dition,  her  spiritual  deprivations  are  still 
greater.  By  the  very  fact  of  its  existence, 
mother  love  demands  its  expression  toward  the 
child.  By  that  same  fact,  it  becomes  a  neces- 
sary factor  in  the  child's  development.  The 
mother  of  too  many  children,  in  a  crowded 
home  where  want,  ill  health  and  antagonism 
are  perpetually  created,  is  deprived  of  this 
simplest  personal  expression.  She  can  give 
nothing  to  her  child  of  herself,  of  her  person- 
ality. Training  is  impossible  and  sympa- 
thetic guidance  equally  so.  Instead,  such  a 
mother  is  tired,  nervous,  irritated  and  ill- 
tempered;  a  determent,  often,  instead  of  a 


TWO  CLASSES  OF  WOMEN    53 

help  to  her  children.  Motherhood  becomes 
a  disaster  and  childhood  a  tragedy- 
It  goes  without  saying  that  this  woman 
loses  also  all  opportmiity  of  personal  expres- 
sion outside  her  home.  She  has  neither  a 
chance  to  develop  social  qualities  nor  to  in- 
dulge in  social  pleasures.  The  feminine  ele* 
ment  in  her  —  that  spirit  which  blossoms  forth 
now  and  then  in  women  free  from  such  burdens 
'■ — cannot  assert  itself.  She  can  contribute 
nothing  to  the  wellbeing  of  the  community. 
She  is  a  breeding  machine  and  a  drudge  —  she 
is  not  an  asset  but  a  liability  to  her  neighbor- 
hood, to  her  class,  to  society.  She  can  be 
nothing  as  long  as  she  is  denied  means  of  lim* 
iting  her  family. 

In  sharp  contrast  with  these  women  whc 
ignorantly  bring  forth  large  families  and  whc 
thereby  enslave  themselves,  we  find  a  few 
women  who  have  one,  two  or  three  children  oi 
no  children  at  all.  These  women,  with  the  ex* 
ception  of  the  childless  ones,  live  full-rounded 
lives.  They  are  found  not  only  in  the  ranks  of 
the  rich  and  the  well-to-do,  but  in  the  ranks  of 
labor  as  well.  They  have  but  one  point  of 
basic  difference  from  their  enslaved  sisters  — 


54   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

they  are  not  burdened  with  the  rearing  of  large 
families. 

We  have  no  need  to  call  upon  the  historian, 
the  sociologist  nor  the  statistician  for  our 
knowledge  of  this  situation.  We  meet  it  every 
day  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  our  lives.  The 
women  who  are  the  great  teachers,  the  great 
writers,  the  artists,  musicians,  physicians,  the 
leaders  of  public  movements,  the  great  suffra- 
gists, reformers,  labor  leaders  and  revolution- 
aries are  those  who  are  not  compelled  to  give 
lavishly  of  their  physical  and  spiritual  strength 
in  bearing  and  rearing  large  families.  The 
situation  is  too  familiar  for  discussion.  Where 
A  woman  with  a  large  family  is  contributing 
directly  to  the  progress  of  her  times  or  the 
betterment  of  social  conditions,  it  is  usually 
because  she  has  sufficient  wealth  to  employ 
trained  nurses,  governesses,  and  others  who 
perform  the  duties  necessary  to  child  rearing. 
She  is  a  rarity  and  is  universally  recognized 
as  such. 

The  women  with  small  families,  however, 
are  free  to  make  their  choice  of  those  social 
pleasures  which  are  the  right  of  every  himian 
being  and  necessary  to  each  one's  full  develop* 


TWO  CLASSES  OF  WOMEN    5$ 

jnent.  They  can  be  and  are,  each  according  to 
tier  individual  capacity,  comrades  and  com- 
panions  to  their  husbands  ^— ^  a  privilege  denied 
to  the  mother  of  many  children.  Theirs  is  the 
opportunity  to  keep  abreast  of  the  times,  to 
make  and  cultivate  a  varied  circle  of  friends,  to 
seek  amusements  as  suits  theii*  taste  and  means, 
to  know  the  meaning  of  real  recreation.  All. 
these  things  remain  unrealized  desires  to  the 
prolific  mother. 

Women  who  have  a  knowledge  of  contra^ 
ceptives  are  not  compelled  to  make  the  choice 
between  a  maternal  experience  and  a  marred 
love  life ;  they  are  not  forced  to  balance  mother- 
hood against  social  and  spiritual  activities. 
Motherhood  is  for  them  to  choose,  as  it  should 
be  for  every  woman  to  choose.  Choosing  to 
become  mothers,  they  do  not  thereby  shut 
themselves  away  from  thorough  companion- 
ship  with  their  husbands,  from  friends,  from 
culture,  from  all  those  manifold  experiences 
which  are  necessary  to  the  completeness  and 
the  joy  of  life. 

Fit  mothers  of  the  race  are  these,  the  eourteoi 
comrades  of  the  men  they  choose,  rather  than 
the  "  slaves  of  slaves.**    For  theirs  is  the  magu^ 


m  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  BACE 

pow^*— tbe  power  of  limiting  their  families 
to  such  nmnbers  as  will  permit  them  to  live 
full-romided  lives.  Such  lives  are  the  expres*- 
sion  of  the  feminine  spirit  which  is  woman  and 
all  of  her  "--not  merely  art,  nor  professional 
skill,  nor  intellect  ^—  but  all  that  woman  Is,  ^ 
may  achieve. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  WICKEDNESS  OF  CREATING  LARGE  FAMILIEM 

THE  most  serious  evfl  of  our  times  is  that 
of  encouraging  the  bringing  into  the 
world  of  large  families.  The  most  immoral 
practice  of  the  day  is  breeding  too  many  chil* 
dren.  These  statements  may  startle  those  who 
have  never  made  a  thorough  investigation  of 
the  problem.  They  are,  nevertheless,  well  con- 
sidered, and  the  truth  of  them  is  abundantly 
borne  out  by  an  examination  of  facts  and  con- 
ditions  which  are  part  of  everyday  experience 
or  observation. 

The  immorality  of  large  families  lies  not 
only  in  their  injury  to  the  members  of  those 
families  but  in  their  injury  to  society.  If  one 
were  asked  offhand  to  name  the  greatest  evil 
of  the  day  one  might,  in  the  light  of  one's  edu» 
cation  by  the  newspapers,  or  by  agitators,  make 
any  one  of  a  number  of  replies.  One  might 
say  prostitution,  the  oppression  of  labor,  child 
kboPe  or  war.     Yet  the  poverty  and  neglect 

ST 


68   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

which  drives  a  girl  into  prostitution  usually 
has  its  source  in  a  family  too  large  to  be  prop- 
erly cared  for  by  the  mother,  if  the  girl  is  not 
actually  subnormal  because  her  mother  bore 
too  many  children,  and,  therefore,  the  more 
likely  to  become  a  prostitute.  Labor  is  op« 
pressed  because  it  is  too  plentiful ;  wages  go  up 
and  conditions  improve  when  labor  is  scarce. 
Large  families  make  plentiful  labor  and  thejr 
also  provide  the  workers  for  the  child-labor 
factories  as  well  as  the  armies  of  imemployed. 
That  population,  swelled  by  overbreeding,  is  a 
basic  cause  of  war,  we  shall  see  in  a  later  chap- 
ter. Without  the  large  family,  not  one  of 
these  evils  could  exist  to  any  considerable  ex- 
tent,  much  less  to  the  extent  that  they  exist 
to-day.  The  large  family  —  especially  the 
family  too  large  to  receive  adequate  care  —  is 
the  one  thing  necessary  to  the  perpetuation  of 
these  and  other  evils  and  is  therefore  a  greater 
evil  than  any  one  of  them. 

First  of  the  manifold  immoralities  involved 
in  the  producing  of  a  large  family  is  the  out- 
rage upon  the  womanhood  of  the  mother.  If 
no  mother  bore  children  against  her  will  or 


LARGE    FAMILIES  59 

against  her  feminine  instinct,  there  would  be 
few  large  families.  The  average  mother  of  a 
baby  every  year  or  two  has  been  forced  int© 
unwilHng  motherhood,  so  far  as  the  later  ar- 
rivals are  concerned.  It  is  not  the  less  immoral 
when  the  power  which  compels  enslavement  is 
the  chm^h,  state  or  the  propaganda  of  well- 
meaning  patriots  clamoring  against  "  race  sui* 
cide."  The  wrong  is  as  great  as  if  the  enslav*» 
ing  force  were  the  unbridled  passions  of  her 
husband.  The  wrong  to  the  unwilling  mother, 
deprived  of  her  liberty,  and  all  opportunity  of 
self-development,  is  in  itself  enough  to  con* 
demn  large  families  as  immoral. 

The  outrage  upon  the  woman  does  not  end 
there,  however.  Excessive  childbearing  is  now 
recognized  by  the  medical  profession  as  one  of 
the  most  prolific  causes  of  ill  health  in  women* 
There  are  in  America  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
women,  in  good  health  when  they  married,  who 
have  within  a  few  years  become  physical 
wrecks,  incapable  of  mothering  their  children, 
incapable  of  enjoying  life. 

"  Every  physician,"  writes  Dr.  Wm.  J. 
Robinson  in  Birth  Control  or  The  Limitation 


60    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

of  Offspring^  "  knows  that  too  frequent  child- 
birth, nursing  and  the  sleepless  nights  that  are 
required  in  bringing  up  a  child  exhaust  the 
vitality  of  thousands  of  mothers,  make  them 
prematurely  old,  or  turn  them  into  chronic 
invalids*" 

The  effect  of  the  large  family  upon  the 
father  is  only  less  disastrous  than  it  is  upon  the 
mother.  The  spectacle  of  the  young  man, 
happy  in  health,  strength  and  the  prospect  of 
a  joyful  love  life,  makes  us  smile  in  sympathy. 
But  this  same  young  man  ten  years  later  is 
likely  to  present  a  spectacle  as  sorry  as  it  is 
familiar.  If  he  finds  that  the  children  come 
one  after  another  at  short  intervals  —  so  fast 
indeed  that  no  matter  how  hard  he  works,  nor 
how  many  hours,  he  cannot  keep  pace  with 
their  needs  —  the  lover  whom  all  the  world 
loves  will  have  been  converted  into  a  disheart- 
ened, threadbare  incompetent,  whom  all  the 
world  pities  or  despises.  Instead  of  being  the 
happy,  competent  father,  supporting  one  ar 
two  children  as  they  should  be  supported,  he 
is  the  frantic  struggler  against  the  burden  of 
five  or  six,  with  the  tragic  prospect  of  several 


LARGE    FAMILIES  61 

moree  The  ranks  of  the  physically  weakened^ 
mentally  dejected  and  spu'itually  hopeless 
young  fathers  of  large  families  attest  all  to® 
strongly  the  immorality  of  the  system. 

If  its  effects  upon  the  mother  and  the  wage** 
earning  father  were  not  enough  to  condemn 
the  large  family  as  an  institution,  its  effects 
upon  the  child  would  make  the  case  against 
it  conclusive.  In  the  United  States,  some 
300,000  children  under  one  year  of  age  die 
each  twelve  months.  Approximately  ninety 
per  cent  of  these  deaths  are  directly  or  indi- 
rectly due  to  malnutrition,  to  other  diseased 
conditions  resulting  from  poverty,  or  to  exces* 
sive  childbearing  by  the  mother. 

The  direct  relationship  between  the  size  of 
the  wage-earner's  family  and  the  death  of  chil- 
dren less  than  one  year  old  has  been  revealed 
by  a  number  of  studies  of  the  infant  death  rate. 
One  of  the  clearest  of  these  was  that  made  by 
Arthur  Geissler  among  miners  and  cited  by 
Dr.  Alfred  Ploetz  before  the  First  Interna- 
tional Eugenic  Congress.*  Taking  26,000 
births  from  unselected  marriages,  and  omit* 

•Problems  in  Eugenics,  London,  1913. 


62   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

ting  families  having  one  and  two  chfldrenB 
Geissler  got  this  result: 

Deaths  During 
First  YeaXo 

1st  born  children,  >....«...«..•....  23% 

2nd  "  '' 20% 

3rd  «  «       o 21% 

4th  "  " .o...  23% 

5th  "  " 26% 

6th  «  «       c  29% 

7th  "  «       o ,  31% 

Otn  •..*..   «>..•«••&.  Ceo  t)0  ^(7 

9th  «  "  ..o..  36% 

10th  «  <^ 41% 

Oth  «  '*  ..,  51% 

12th  "  *'  60% 

Thus  we  see  that  the  second  and  third  chil^- 
dren  have  a  very  good  chance  to  live  through 
the  first  year.  Children  arriving  later  have 
less  and  less  chance,  until  the  twelfth  has 
hardly  any  chance  at  all  to  live  twelve  months. 

This  does  not  complete  the  case,  however, 
for  those  who  care  to  go  farther  into  the  sub- 
ject will  find  that  many  of  those  who  live  for 
a  year  die  before  they  reach  the  age  of  five. 

Many,  perhaps,  will  think  it  idle  to  go  far* 
iher  in  demonstrating  the  immorality  of  large 
families,  but  since  there  is  still  an  abimdance 
<Df  proof  at  hand,  it  may  be  offered  for  the 


LARGE    FAMILIES  63 

sake  of  those  who  find  diiBculty  in  adjusting 
old-fashioned  ideas  to  the  facts.  The  most 
merciful  thing  that  the  large  family  does  to 
one  of  its  infant  members  is  to  kill  it.  The 
same  factors  which  create  the  terrible  infant 
mortality  rate,  and  which  swell  the  death  rate 
of  children  between  the  ages  of  one  and  five, 
operate  even  more  extensively  to  lower  the 
health  rate  of  the  surviving  members.  More* 
overj  the  overcrowded  homes  of  large  families 
reared  in  poverty  further  contribute  to  this 
condition.  Lack  of  medical  attention  is  still 
another  factor,  so  that  the  child  who  must 
struggle  for  health  in  competition  with  other 
members  of  a  closely  packed  family  has  still 
great  difficulties  to  meet  after  its  poor  consti* 
tution  and  malnutrition  have  been  accounted 
for. 

The  probability  of  a  child  handicapped  by 
a  weak  constitution,  an  overcrowded  home, 
madequate  food  and  care,  and  possibly  a  defi- 
cient mental  equipment,  winding  up  in  prison 
or  an  almshouse,  is  too  evident  for  comment. 
Every  jail,  hospital  for  the  insane,  reforma- 
tory and  institution  for  the  feebleminded  cries 


64   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

out  against  the  evils  of  too  prolific  breeding 
^mong  wage-workers. 

We  shall  see  when  we  come  to  consider  the 
relation  of  voluntary  motherhood  to  the  rights 
of  labor  and  to  the  prevention  of  war  that 
the  large  family  of  the  worker  makes  possible 
his  oppression,  and  that  it  also  is  the  chief  cause 
of  such  human  holocausts  as  the  one  just  closed 
after  the  four  and  a  half  bloodiest  years  in 
history.  No  such  extended  consideration  is 
necessary  to  indicate  from  what  source  the 
young  slaves  in  the  child-labor  factories  come. 
They  come  from  large  impoverished  families 
—  from  families  in  which  the  older  children 
must  put  their  often  feeble  strength  to  the  task 
of  supporting  the  younger. 

The  immorality  of  bringing  large  families 
into  the  world  is  recognized  by  those  who  are 
combatting  the  child-labor  evil.  Mary  Alden 
Hopkins,  writing  in  Harper's  Weekly  in  1915, 
quotes  Owen  R.  Love  joy,  general  secretary 
of  the  National  Child  Labor  Committee,  as 
follows : 

"  How  r^any  are  too  many?  .  .  .  Any 
more  than  the  mother  can  look  after  and  the 
father  make  a  living  for    .     .     .    Under  pres- 


LARGE    FAMILIES  65 

ent  conditions  as  soon  as  there  are  too  many 
children  for  the  father  to  feed,  some  of  them 
go  to  work  in  the  mine  or  factory  or  store  or 
mill  near  hy.  In  doing  this,  they  not  only  in- 
jure their  tender  growing  bodies,  but  indi- 
rectly, they  drag  down  the  father's  wage  .  .  . 
The  home  becomes  a  mere  rendezvous  for  the 
nightly  gathering  of  bodies  numb  with  weari- 
ness and  minds  drunk  with  sleep."  And  if 
they  survive  the  factory,  they  marry  to  per- 
petuate and  multiply  their  ignorance,  weak- 
ness  and  diseases. 

What  have  large  families  to  do  with  prosti- 
tution? Ask  anyone  who  has  studied  the  prob' 
lem.  The  size  of  the  family  has  a  direct  bear- 
ing on  the  lives  of  thousands  of  girls  who  are 
living  in  prostitution.  Poverty,  lack  of  care 
and  training  during  adolescence,  overcrowded 
housing  conditions  which  accompany  large 
families  are  xmiversally  recognized  causes  of 
"  waywardness  "  in  girls.  Social  workers  have 
cried  out  in  vain  against  these  conditions, 
pointing  to  their  inevitable  results. 

In  the  foreword  to  "Downward  Paths,'* 
A,  Maude  Roy  den  says :  "  Intimately  con- 
nected with  this  aspect  of  the  question  is  that 


66   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  KACE 

of  home  and  housing,  especially  of  the  chili 
The  age  at  which  children  are  first  corrupted 
is  almost  incredibly  early,  until  we  consider  the 
nature  of  the  surroundings  in  which  they  grow 
up.  Insufficient  space,  over-crowding,  the 
herding  together  of  all  ages  and  both  sexes  — • 
these  things  break  down  the  barriers  of  a  na« 
tural  modesty  and  reserve.  Where  decency  is 
practically  impossible,  unchastity  w411  follow, 
and  follow  almost  as  a  matter  of  course.'* 
And  the  child  who  has  no  place  to  play  except 
in  the  street,  who  lacks  mother  care,  whose 
chief  emotional  experience  is  the  longing  for 
the  necessities  of  life?  We  know  too  well  the 
end  of  the  sorry  tale.  The  forlorn  figures  of 
the  shadows  where  lurk  the  girls  who  sell  them^ 
selves  that  they  may  eat  and  be  clothed  rise 
up  to  damn  the  moral  dogmatists,  who  mouth 
their  sickening  exhortations  to  the  wives  and 
mothers  of  the  workers  to  breed,  breed,  bree^ 
The  evidence  is  conclusive  as  regards  the 
large  family  of  the  wage- worker.  Social  work- 
ers, physicians  and  reformers  cry  out  to  stop 
the  breeding  of  these,  who  must  exist  in  want 
until  they  become  permanent  members  of  the 
ranks  of  the  imfit. 


LARGE    FAMILIES  67 

But  what  of  the  family  of  the  wealthy  or 
the  merely  well-to-do?  It  is  among  these 
classes  that  we  find  the  women  who  have 
attained  to  voluntary  motherhood.  It  is  to 
these  classes,  too,  that  the  "  race  suicide " 
alarmists  have  from  time  to  time  addressed 
specially  emphasized  pleas  for  more  chil- 
dren. The  advocates  of  more  prolific  breed- 
ing urge  that  these  same  women  have  more 
intelligence,  better  health,  more  time  to 
care  for  children  and  more  means  to  support 
them.  They  therefore  declare  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  such  women  to  populate  the  land  with 
strong,  healthy,  intelligent  offspring  —  to  bear 
children  in  great  numbers. 

It  is  high  time  to  expose  the  sheer  foolish 
ness  of  this  argimient.  The  first  absurdity  is 
that  the  women  who  are  in  comfortable  circum- 
stances could  continue  to  be  cultured  and  of 
social  value  if  they  were  the  mothers  of  large 
families.  Neither  could  they  maintain  their 
present  standard  of  health  nor  impart  it  to 
their  children. 

While  it  is  true  that  they  have  resources  at 
their  command  which  ease  the  burden  of  child- 
bearino"  and  child  rearing  immeasurably,  it  is 


68    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

also  true  that  the  wealthy  mother,  as  well  as 
the  poverty-stricken  mother,  must  give  from 
her  own  system  certain  elements  which  it  takes 
time  to  replace.  Excessive  childbearing  is 
harder  on  the  woman  who  lacks  care  than  on 
the  one  who  does  not,  but  both  ahke  must  give 
their  bodies  time  to  recover  from  the  strain  of 
childbearing.  If  the  women  in  fortunate  cir- 
cumstances gave  ear  to  the  demand  of  mascu- 
line "  race-suicide "  *  fanatics  they  could 
within  a  few  years  be  down  to  the  condition  of 
their  sisters  who  lack  time  to  cultivate  their 
talents  and  intellects.  A  vigorous,  intelligent, 
fruitfully  cultured  motherhood  is  all  but  im- 
possible if  no  restriction  is  placed  by  that 
motherhood  upon  the  number  of  children. 

Wage- workers  and  salaried  people  have  a 
vital  interest  in  the  size  of  the  families  of  those 
better  situated  in  life.  Large  families  among 
the  rich  are  immoral  not  only  because  they  in- 
vade the  natural  right  of  woman  to  the  control 
of  her  own  body,  to  self-development  and  to 
self-expression,  but  because  they  are  oppres- 
sive to  the  poorer  elements  of  society.  If  the 
upper  and  middle  classes  of  society  had  kept 
pace  with  the  poorer  elements  of  society  in  re* 


LARGE    FAMILIES  69 

production  during  the  past  fifty  years,  the 
working  class  to-day  would  be  forced  down  to 
the  level  of  the  Chinese  whose  wage  standard 
is  said  to  be  a  few  handfuls  of  rice  a  day. 

If  these  considerations  are  not  enough  to 
halt  the  masculine  advocate  of  large  families 
who  reminds  us  of  the  days  of  our  mothers  and 
grandmothers,  let  it  be  remembered  that  bear- 
ing and  rearing  six  or  eight  children  to-day  is 
a  far  different  matter  from  what  it  was  in  the 
generations  just  preceding.  Physically  and 
nervously,  the  woman  of  to-day  is  not  fitted  to 
bear  children  as  frequently  as  was  her  mother 
and  her  mother's  mother.  The  high  tension  of 
modern  life  and  the  complicating  of  woman's 
everyday  existence  have  doubtless  contributed 
to  this  result.  And  who  of  us  can  say,  until  a 
careful  scientific  investigation  is  made,  how 
much  the  rapid  development  of  tuberculosis 
and  other  grave  diseases,  even  among  the  well- 
nurtured,  may  be  due  to  the  depletion  of  the 
physical  capital  of  the  unborn  by  the  too  pro- 
lific childbearing  of  preceding  generations  of 
mothers? 

The  immorality  of  bringing  into  being  a 
large  family  is  a  wrong-doing  shared  by  three 


TO   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

>— the  mother,  the  father  and  society.  Upon 
all  three  falls  the  burden  of  guilt.  It  may  be 
said  for  the  mother  and  father  that  they  are 
usually  Ignorant.  What  shall  be  said  of  so- 
ciety? What  shall  be  said  of  us  who  permit 
outworn  laws  and  customs  to  persist  in  piling 
up  the  appalling  simi  of  public  expense,  misery 
and  spiritual  degradation?  The  indictment 
against  the  large  unwanted  family  is  written  in 
human  woe.  Who  in  the  light  of  intelligent 
understanding  shall  have  the  brazenness  to 
stand  up  and  defend  it? 

One  thmg  we  know  —  the  woman  v/ho  has 
escaped  the  chains  of  too  great  reproducti\  ity 
will  never  again  wear  them.  The  birth  rate  of 
the  wealthy  and  upper  classes  will  never  ap- 
preciably rise.  The  woman  of  these  classes  is 
free  of  her  most  oppressive  bonds.  Being  free, 
we  have  a  right  to  expect  much  of  her.  We 
expect  her  to  give  still  greater  expression  to 
her  feminine  spirit  — we  expect  her  to  enrich 
the  intellectual,  artistic,  moral  and  spiritual 
life  of  the  world.  We  expect  her  to  demolish 
old  systems  of  morals,  a  degenerate  prudery. 
Dark- Age  religious  concepts,  laws  that  enslave 
women  by  denying  them  the  knowledge  of 


LARGE    FAMILIES  71 

their  bodies,  and  information  as  to  contracep 
tives.  These  must  go  to  the  scrapheap  of 
vicious,  cast-off  things.  Hers  is  the  power  to 
send  them  there.  Shall  we  look  to  her  to  strike 
the  first  blow  which  shall  wrench  her  sisters 
from  the  grip  of  the  dead  hand  of  the  past? 

•Interesting  and  perhaps  surprising  light  is  thrown  upon  tht 
origin  of  the  term  **  race  suicide  **  by  the  following  quotation 
from  an  article  by  Harold  Bolce  in  the  Cosmopolitan  (New 
York)  for  May,  1909: 

** '  The  sole  effect  of  prolificacy  is  to  fill  the  cemeteries  with 
tiny  graves,  sacrifices  of  the  innocents  to  the  Moloch  of  im- 
moderate maternity.*  Thus  Insists  Edward  A.  Ross,  Professor 
of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin;  and  he  pro- 
tests against  the  *  dwarfing  of  women  and  the  cheapening  of 
men  *  as  regards  the  restriction  of  the  birth  rate  as  a  '  move- 
ment at  bottom  salutary,  and  its  evils  minor,  transient  and 
curable.'  This  is  virile  gospel,  and  particularly  significant  com- 
ing from  the  teacher  who  invented  the  term  *race  suicide* 
which  many  have  erroneously  attributed  to  Mr.  Eoosevelt.'' 


CHAPTER  VI 

CRIES  OF  DESPAIR  AND  SOCIETY^S  PROBLEMS 

EFORE  we  pass  to  a  further  eonsidera* 
tion  of  our  subject,  shall  we  not  pause 
to  take  a  still  closer  look  at  the  human  misery 
wrought  by  the  enslavement  of  women  through 
unwilling  motherhood?  Would  you  know  the 
appalling  sum  of  this  misery  better  than  any 
author,  any  scientist,  any  physician,  any  social 
worker  can  tell  you?  Hear  the  story  from  the 
lips  of  the  women  themselves.  Learn  at  first 
hand  what  it  means  to  make  a  broken  drudge 
of  a  woman  who  might  have  been  the  happy 
mother  of  a  few  strong  children.  Learn  from 
the  words  of  the  victims  of  involuntary  mother- 
hood what  it  means  to  them,  to  their  children 
and  to  society  to  force  the  physically  unfit  or 
the  unwilling  to  bear  children.  Wlien  you 
have  learned,  stop  to  ask  yourself  what  is  the 
worth  of  the  law,  the  moral  code,  the  tradition, 
the  religion,  that  for  the  sake  of  an  outworn 
dogma  of  submission  would  wreck  the  lives  of 

72 


CRIES    OF   DESPAIR  73 

these  women,  condemn  their  progeny  to  pain, 
want,  disease  and  helplessness.  Ask  yourself 
if  these  letters,  these  cries  of  despair,  born  of 
the  anguish  of  woman's  sex  slavery  are  not  in 
themselves  enough  to  stop  the  mouths  of  the 
demagogues,  the  imperialists  and  the  ecclesi* 
astics  who  clamor  for  more  and  yet  more  chil* 
dren?  And  if  the  pain  of  others  has  no  power 
to  move  your  heart  and  stir  your  hands  and 
brain  to  action,  ask  yourself  the  more  selfish 
question:  Can  the  cliildren  of  these  unfor- 
tunate mothers  be  other  than  a  burden  to  so- 
ciety-—  a  burden  which  reflects  itself  in  in- 
numerable phases  of  cost,  crime  and  general 
social  detriment? 

"  For  our  own  sakes  —  for  our  children's 
sakes  -■ — "  plead  the  mothers,  "  help  us !  Let  us 
be  women,  rather  than  breeding  machines." 

The  women  who  thus  cry  out  are  pleading 
not  only  for  themselves  and  their  children,  but 
for  society  itself.  Their  plea  is  for  us  and 
ours  —  it  is  the  plea  for  happier  conditions, 
for  higher  ideals,  for  a  stronger,  more  vigor- 
ous, more  highly  developed  race. 

The  letters  in  this  chapter  are  the  voices  of 
humble  prophets  crying  out  to  us  stop  our  na- 


T4   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  BACE 

tional  habit  of  human  waste.  They  are  warn- 
ings against  disaster  which  we  now  share  and 
must  continue  to  share  as  it  grows  worse,  un- 
less we  heed  the  warning  and  put  our  national 
house  in  order. 

Each  and  every  imwanted  child  is  likely  te 
be  in  some  way  a  social  liability.  It  is  only 
the  wanted  child  who  is  likely  to  be  a  social 
asset.  If  we  have  faith  in  this  intuitive  de- 
mand of  the  unfortunate  mothers,  if  we  under* 
stand  both  its  dire  and  its  hopeful  significance, 
we  shall  dispose  of  those  social  problems  which 
so  insistently  and  menacingly  confront  us  to^ 
day.  For  the  instinct  of  maternity  to  protect 
its  own  fruits,  the  instinct  of  womanhood  to  be 
free  to  give  something  besides  surplus  of  chil« 
dren  to  the  world,  cannot  go  astray.  The  ris^ 
ing  generation  is  always  the  material  of  prog^ 
ress,  and  motherhood  is  the  agency  for  the  im- 
provement and  the  strengthening  and  guiding 
of  that  generation. 

The  excerpts  contained  In  this  chapter  are 
typical  of  the  letters  which  come  to  me  by  the 
thousands.  They  tell  their  own  story,  simply 
— sometimes  ungrammatically  and  illiterately^ 
but  nevertheless  irresistibly.    It  is  the  story  ot 


CRIES    OF   DESPAIR  7t 

slow  murder  of  the  helpless  by  a  society  that 
shields  itself  behind  ancient,  inhuman  moral 
creeds  —  which  dares  to  weigh  those  dead 
creeds  against  the  agony  of  the  living  who  pray 
for  the  "  mercy  of  death.'* 

Can  a  mother  who  would  "  rather  die  "  than 
bear  more  children  serve  society  by  bearing 
still  others  ?  Can  children  carried  through  nine 
months  of  dread  and  imspeakable  mental  an* 
guish  and  bom  into  an  atmosphere  of  fear  and 
tnger,  to  grow  up  uneducated  and  in  want,  be 
a  benefit  to  the  world?  Here  is  what  the 
mother  saysj 

•  I  have  read  m  tli©  paper  about  you  and  am  very  interested 
ki  Birth  Controi  1  am  a  mother  of  four  living  children  and 
one  dead  the  oldest  10  and  baby  22  months  old.  I  am  very 
tftervous  and  sickly  after  my  children.  I  would  like  you  to 
tdvise  me  what  to  do  to  prevent  from  having  any  more  as 
2  would  rather  die  than  have  another.  I  am  keeping  away 
frcm  my  hosDanci  as  much  as  I  can,  but  it  causes  quarrels 
«ndl  almost  separation  All  my  oabies  have  had  marasmus  in 
the  first  year  of  their  lives  and  I  almost  lost  my  baby  last 
tummer.  I  always  worry  about  my  children  so  much.  My 
ausband  works  in  a  brass  foundry  it  js  iiot  a  very  good  job 
Mid  livmg  ts  so  high  that  we  have  to  live  as  cheap  as  possible. 
I*ve  only  got  ^  rooms  and  kitnhen  and  1  do  all  my  work  and 
•ewing  which  is  very  hard  for  me.** 

Shall  this  woman  continue  to  be  forced  into 
«  life  of  unnatural  continence  which  further 
aggravates  her  ill  health  and  produces  constant 


76   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

discord?  Shall  she  go  on  having  children  wha 
come  into  being  with  a  heritage  of  ill  health 
and  poverty,  and  who  are  bound  to  become 
public  burdens?  Or  would  it  be  the  better 
policy  to  let  motherhood  follow  its  instinct  to 
save  itself,  its  offspring  and  society  from  these 
ills? 

Or  shall  women  be  forced  into  abortion,  as 
is  testified  by  the  mother  whose  daughters  are 
mothers,  and  who,  in  the  hope  of  saving  them 
from  both  slavery  and  the  destruction  of  their 
unborn  children,  wrote  the  letter  which  follows  t 

**  1  have  born  and  raised  6  children  and  I  know  aU  the  hard- 
ships ot  raising  a  large  family.  I  am  now  53  years  old  and 
past  having  children  but  1  have  3  daughters  that  have  2 
children  each  and  they  say  they  will  die  before  they  will  have 
any  more  and  every  now  and  again  they  go  to  a  doctor  and 
get  rid  of  one  and  some  day  1  think  it  will  kill  them  but  they 
say  they  don't  care  for  they  will  be  better  dead  than  live 
in  hell  with  a  big  family  and  nothing  to  raise  them  on.  It  is 
for  there  sakes  I  wish  you  to  give  me  that  information.'* 

What  could  the  three  women  mentioned  in 
this  letter  contribute  to  the  wellbeing  of  the 
future  American  race?  Nothing,  except  by 
doing  exactly  what  they  wish  to  do  —  refusing 
to  bear  children  that  they  do  not  want  and  can- 
not care  for.  Their  instinct  is  sound  —  but 
what  is  to  be  said  of  the  position  of  society  ai 


CRIES    OF   DESPAIR  77 

large,  which  forces  women  who  are  in  the  grip 
of  a  sound  instinct  to  seek  repeated  abortions 
in  order  to  follow  that  instinct?  Are  we  not 
compelling  women  to  choose  between  inflicting 
injm-y  upon  themselves,  their  children  and  the 
community,  and  undergoing  an  abhorrent  op- 
eration which  kills  the  tenderness  and  delicacy 
of  womanhood,  even  as  it  may  injure  or  kill 
the  body? 

Will  the  offspring  of  a  paralytic,  who  must 
perforce  neglect  the  physical  care  and  train- 
ing of  her  children,  enhance  the  common  good 
by  their  coming  ?  Here  is  a  letter  from  a  para- 
lytic mother,  whose  days  and  nights  are  tor- 
tured by  the  thought  of  another  child,  and 
whose  reason  is  tottering  at  the  prospect  of 
leaving  her  children  without  her  care: 

**I  sent  for  a  copy  of  your  magazine  and  now  feel  I  must 
write  you  to  see  if  you  can  help  me. 

**I  was  a  high  school  girl  who  married  a  day  laborer  seven 
years  ago.  In  a  few  months  I  will  again  be  a  mother,  the 
fourth  child  in  less  than  six  years.  While  carrying  my 
babies  am  always  partly  paralyzed  on  one  side.  Do  not  know 
the  cause  but  the  doctor  said  at  last  birth  we  must  be  'mora 
careful/  as  I  could  not  stand  having  so  many  children.  Am 
always  very  oick  for  a  long  time  and  have  to  have  chloroform,. 

"We  can  afford  help  only  about  3  weeks,  until  1  am  on  my 
feet  again,  after  confinement.  I  work  as  hard  as  1  can  but 
VXJ  w^rk  and  my  children  are  always  neglected     I  wondeS 


T8  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

^  my  body  does  survive  this  next  birth  if  my  reason  wiH. 

*It  is  terrible  to  think  of  bringing  these  little  bodies  andl 
«ouIa  into  the  world  without  means  or  strength  to  care  for 
them.  And  I  can  see  no  relief  unless  yon  give  St  to  me  or 
tell  me  where  to  get  itu  I  am  weaker  each  time  and  I  know 
that  this  must  be  the  last  one,  for  it  would  be  better  for  me 
to  gOk  than  to  bring  more  neglected  babies  into  the  world. 
t  «en  hardly  sleep  at  night  for  worrying.  Is  there  an  answer 
tor  women  like  me?** 

In  another  chapter,  we  have  gotten  a  glimpse 
«f  the  menace  of  the  feebleminded.  Here  is  a 
woman  who  is  praying  for  help  to  avoid  adding 
Jto  the  nimiber  of  mentally  helpless: 

*  My  baby  is  only  10  months  old  and  the  oldest  one  of  four 
is  ?»  and  more  care  than  a  baby,  has  always  been  helpless. 
We  do  not  own  a  roof  over  our  heads  and  I  am  so  discouraged 
^  want  to  die  if  nothing  can  be  done.  Cant  you  help  me  jusi 
xnis  time  and  then  I  know  I  can  take  care  of  myself.  Ignor- 
ance on  this  an  important  subject  has  put  me  where  I  ant 
i  dont  know  how  to  be  sure  of  bringing  myself  around.  I  beg 
of  you  to  help  me  and  anything  I  can  do  to  help  further  your 
wonderful  work  I  will  do.  Only  help  me  this  once,  no  on^ 
will  know  only  I  will  be  blessed. 

*I  not  only  have  a  terrible  time  when  1  am  confined  but 
caring  for  the  oldest  child  it  preys  so  on  my  mind  that  t  feaJ 
more  defectii^e  children.    Help  me  please!  " 

The  offspring  of  one   feebleminded  ma» 
named  Jukes  has  cost  the  public  in  one  way 
and  another  $1,300,000  in  seventy-five  years 
Do  we  want  more  such  families?     Is  this 
woman  standing  guard  for  the  general  wel< 


CRIES    OF   DESPAIR  7d 

fare?  Had  she  been  permitted  the  use  of  con* 
traceptives  before  she  was  forced  to  make  a 
vain  plea  for  abortion,  would  she  not  have  ren- 
dered a  service  to  her  fellow  citizens,  as  well 
as  to  herself? 

Millions  are  spent  in  the  United  States 
every  year  to  combat  tuberculosis.  The  na* 
tional  waste  involved  in  illness  and  deaths  from 
tuberculosis  runs  up  into  the  billions.  Is  it 
then  good  business,  to  say  nothing  of  the  hu* 
mane  aspects  of  the  situation,  to  compel  the 
writer  of  the  following  letter  to  go  on  adding 
to  the  number  of  the  tubercular?  Which  is 
the  guardian  of  public  welfare  here^ — the 
mother  instinct  which  wishes  to  avoid  bearing 
tubercular  children,  or  the  statute  which  for- 
bids her  to  know  how  to  avoid  adding  to  the 
census  of  "  white  plague "  victims?  The 
letter  reads: 

"Kindly  pardon  me  tor  writing  this  to  you,  not  knowing 
what  trouble  this  may  cause  you.  But  I've  heard  of  yo& 
through  a  friend  and  realize  you  are  a  friend  of  humanity.  It 
people  wouid  see  with  your  light,  the  world  would  be  healthy 
I  married  the  first  time  when  I  was  eighteen  years  old,  a 
drinking  man.  I  became  mother  to  five  children.  In  1908  my 
husband  died  of  consumption.  1  lost  two  of  my  Oldest  chiidreB 
from  the  same  disease,  one  at  16  and  th»  other  at  23.  The 
youngest  ot  them  all  a  sweet  giri  of  nineteen,  now  lies  at 

sanatorium  expecting  to  leave  ii«  at  any  timac    Tb^ 

other  sister  and  brother  look  very  poorly. 


80    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

•*I  have  always  worked  very  hard,  because  I  had  to.  Is 
1913  I  married  again,  a  good  man  this  time,  but  a  laboring 
man,  and  our  constant  fear  and  trouble  ia  what  may  happen 
if  we  bring  children  into  the  world.  Fm  forty-six  >€ars  old 
this  month  and  not  very  well  any  more,  either.  So  a  godsend 
wil3  be  some  one  who  can  tell  me  how  to  care  for  myself,  bo 
X  can  be  free  from  suflFering  and  also  not  bring  mortals  to 
earth  to  suffer  and  die." 

Not  even  the  blindest  of  all  dogmatists  can 
ignore  the  danger  to  the  community  of  to-day 
and  the  race  of  to-morrow  in  permitting  an  in- 
sane woman  to  go  on  bearing  children.  Here 
is  a  letter  which  tells  a  two-sided  story  —  how 
mother  instinct,  even  when  clouded  by  periodic 
insanity,  seeks  to  protect  itself  and  society,  and 
how  society  prevents  her  from  attaining  that 
end: 

''There  is  a  woman  In  this  town  who  has  six  children  and 
to  expecting  another.  Directly  after  the  birth  of  a  child,  she 
goes  insane,  a  raving  maniac,  and  they  send  her  to  the  insane 
asylum.  While  she  is  gone,  her  home  and  children  are  cared 
for  by  neighbors.  After  about  six  months,  they  discharge  her 
and  she  comes  home  and  is  in  a  family  way  again  in  a  few 
months.    Still  the  doctors  will  do  nothing  for  her. 

*•  She  is  a  well-educated  woman  and  says  if  she  would  not 
have  any  more  children,  she  is  sure  she  could  be  entirely  free 
from  these  insane  spells. 

"If  you  will  send  me  one  of  your  pamphlets,  I  will  give 
Jt  to  her  and  several  others  equally  deserving. 

**  Hoping  you  wiH  see  fit  to  grant  my  request,  1  remain 


CHIES    OF   DESPAIR  81 

The  very  word  "  syphilis  '*  brings  a  shudder 
to  anyone  who  is  familiar  with  the  horrors  of 
the  malady.  Not  only  in  the  suffering  brought 
to  the  victim  himself  and  in  the  danger  of  in* 
fecting  others,  but  in  the  dire  legacy  of  help- 
lessness and  disease  which  is  left  to  the  off- 
spring of  the  syphiHtic,  is  this  the  most  de« 
structive  socially,  of  all  "  plagues."  Here  is 
a  letter,  which  as  a  criticism  of  our  present 
public  policy  in  regard  to  national  waste  and 
to  contraceptives,  defies  comment: 

•  1  was  left  without  a  father  when  a  girl  of  fourteen  ycara 
old«  I  was  the  oldest  child  of  five.  My  jnother  had  no  means 
of  support  except  her  two  hands,  so  we  worked  at  anything 
we  couldj  my  job  being  nurse  girl  at  home  while  mother  worked 
most  of  the  timei  as  she  could  earn  more  money  than  I  could,; 
for  sue  could  do  harder  work. 

"I  wasn't  very  strong  and  finally  after  two  years  my 
mother  got  oo  tired  and  worn  out  trying  to  make  a  living  for 
80  many,  she  married  again,  and  as  she  married  a  poor  man, 
we  children  w«re  not  much  better  off.  At  the  age  of  seventeen 
I  married  a  man,  a  brakeman  on  the  <— — —  Railroad,  who 
was  eleven  years  older  than  I.  He  drank  some  and  was  a 
very  frail-looking  man,  but  I  was  very  ignorant  of  the  world 
and  did  not  think  of  anything  but  making  a  home  for  myself 
and  husband.  After  eleven  months  I  had  a  little  girl  born  to 
me.  I  did  not  want  more  children,  but  my  mother-in-law 
told  me  it  was  a  terrible  sin  to  do  anything  to  keep  from 
having  children  and  that  the  Lord  only  sent  just  what  1  could 
take  care  of  and  if  I  heard  of  anything  to  do  I  was  told  it  was 
injurious,  so  I  did  not  try. 

''In  eleven  months  again,  October  25,  I  had  another  littlp 


82    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

puny  girl.  In  twenty-three  months,  Sept.  25th,  I  had  a 
«even-lb.  boy.  In  ten  months,  July  15, 1  had  a  seven-months 
Oaby  that  lived  five  hours.  In  eleven  months,  June  20,  I  had 
snother  little  girl.  In  seventeen  months,  Nov,  30,  another  boy. 
tn  nine  months  a  four  months'  miscarriage.  In  twelve  monthg 
mother  girl,  and  in  three  and  a  half  years  another  girh 

**  All  of  these  children  were  born  into  poverty;  the  father*« 
tiealth  was  always  poor,  and  when  the  third  girl  was  born 
he  was  discharged  from  the  road  because  of  his  disability, 
yet  he  was  still  able  to  put  children  into  the  world.  When 
the  oldest  child  was  twelve  years  old  the  father  died  of  con- 
cussion of  the  brain  while  the  youngest  child  was  bom  two 
months  after  his  death. 

**  Now,  Mrs.  Sanger,  I  did  not  want  those  children,  because 
«ven  in  my  igncrancs  I  had  sense  enough  to  know  that  I  had 
no  right  to  bring  those  children  into  such  a  world  where  they 
could  not  have  decent  care,  for  1  was  not  able  to  do  it  myself 
nor  hire  it  done.  I  prayed  and  I  prayed  that  they  would  die 
when  they  were  bom.  Praying  did  no  good  and  to-day  I  have 
read  and  studied  enough  to  know  that  I  am  the  mother  of 
seven  living  children  and  that  I  committed  a  crime  by  bringing 
them  into  the  world,  their  father  was  syphilitic  (I  did  not 
know  about  such  things  when  1  was  a  girl).  One  son  is  to 
be  sent  to  Mexico,  while  one  of  my  girls  is  a  victim  of  the 
white  slave  trafiQc. 

**I  raised  my  family  in  a  little  college  town  in  < 

and  am  well  known  there,  for  I  made  my  living  washing  and 
working  for  the  college  people  while  I  raised  my  little  brood, 
1  often  wondered  why  those  educated  well-to-do  people  nevei 
tiad  so  many  children^  I  have  one  married  daughter  who  Is 
tubercular^  and  she  aiso  has  two  little  girls,  only  a  year  apart, 
I  feel  so  bad  about  it,  and  write  to  ask  you  to  send  me 
information  for  her.  Don't  stop  your  good  wotk|  don't  think 
tt's  not  appreciated;  for  there  are  hundreds  of  women  Iik« 
myself  who  are  not  afraid  to  risk  their  lives  to  help  yoF 
^et  this  information  to  poor  womejn  who  need  it.* 


CRIES    OF  DESPAIR  Sh 

There  is  no  need  to  go  on  repeating  these 
cries.  These  letters  have  come  to  me  by  the 
thousands.  There  are  enough  of  them  to  fill 
many  volumes  —  each  with  its  own  individual 
tragedy^  each  with  its  own  warning  to  society. 

Every  ill  that  we  are  trying  to  cure  to-day 
is  reflected  in  them.  The  wife  who  through  an 
unvnlling  continence  drives  her  husband  to 
prostitution ;  habitual  drimkenness,  which  pro* 
hibition  may  or  may  not  have  disposed  of  as  a 
social  problem;  mothers  who  toil  in  mills  and 
whose  children  must  follow  them  to  that  toil, 
adding  to  the  long  train  of  evils  involved  in 
child  labor;  mothers  who  have  brought  eight 
ten,  twelve  or  fifteen  undernourished,  weakly 
children  into  the  world  to  become  public  bu]> 
dens  of  one  sort  or  another  —  all  these  and 
more,  with  the  ever-present  economic  problem, 
and  women  who  are  remaining  unmarried  he* 
cause  they  fear  a  large  family  which  must 
exist  in  want;  men  who  are  living  abnormal 
lives  for  the  same  reason.  All  the  social  handi* 
caps  and  evils  of  the  day  are  woven  into  these 
letters  —  and  out  of  each  of  them  rises  these 
challenging  facts:  First,  oppressed  mother* 
hood  knows  that  the  cure  for  these  evils  lies  in 


84   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

birth  control;  second,  society  has  not  yet 
learned  to  permit  motherhood  to  stand  guard 
for  itself,  its  children,  the  common  good  and 
the  coming  race.  And  one  reading  such  let- 
ters, and  realizing  their  significance,  is  con- 
strained to  wonder  how  long  such  a  situatioQ 
can  exist. 


CHAPTER  yil 

WHEN  SHOULD  A  WOMAN  AVOn>   HAVINO 
CHILDREN? 

ARE  overburdened  mothers  justified  in 
their  appeals  for  contraceptives  or  abor* 
lions?  What  shall  we  say  to  women  who  write 
such  letters  as  those  published  in  the  preceding 
chapter?  Will  anyone,  after  reading  those 
letters,  dare  to  say  to  these  women  that  they 
should  go  on  bringing  helpless  children  into  the 
world  to  share  their  increasing  misery? 

The  women  who  thus  cry  for  aid  are  th« 
victims  of  ignorance.  Awakening  from  that 
ignori  xice,  they  are  demanding  relief.  Had 
they  been  permitted  a  knowledge  of  their  sex 
functions,  had  they  had  some  guiding  principle 
of  motherhood,  those  who  at  this  late  day  are 
asking  for  contraceptives  would  have  swept 
aside  all  barriers  and  procured  them  long  ago. 
Those  who  are  appealing  for  abortions  would 
never  have  been  in  such  a  situation. 

To  say  to  these  women  that  they  should  con* 

85 


S6  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

tinue  their  helpless  breeding  of  ihe  helpless  is 
stupid  brutality.  The  facts  set  forth  earlier  in 
this  book,  and  the  cries  of  tortured  motherhood 
which  echo  through  the  letters  just  referred  to, 
are  more  than  ample  evidence  that  there  are 
times  when  it  is  woman's  highest  duty  to  refuse 
to  bear  children. 

There  has  seemed  to  be  a  great  deal  of  dis- 
agreement among  the  medical  authorities  who 
have  attempted  to  say  when  a  woman  should 
not  have  children.  This  disagreement  has  been 
rendered  even  more  confusing  by  a  babel  of 
voices  from  the  ranks  of  sociologists.  Within 
the  past  few  years,  however,  so  much  light  has 
been  shed  upon  the  subject  that  it  is  now  com- 
paratively easy  for  the  student  to  separate  the 
well-founded  conclusions  from  those  which  are 
of  doubtful  value,  or  plainly  worthless.  The 
opinions  which  I  summarize  here  are  not 
so  much  my  own,  originally,  as  those 
of  medical  authorities  who  have  made 
deep  and  careful  investigations.  There 
is,  however,  nothing  set  forth  here  which 
I  have  not  in  my  own  studies  tested 
and  proved  correct.  In  addition  to  carrying 
the  weight  of  the  best  medical  authority,  a  fact 


AVOIDING  CHILDBIRTH         87 

easily  confirmed  by  the  first  specialist  you  meet, 
they  are  fm-ther  reinforced  by  the  findings  of 
the  federal  Children's  Bureau,  and  other 
organizations  which  have  examined  infant  mor* 
tality  and  compiled  rates.    ^ 

To  the  woman  who  wishes  to  have  children^ 
we  must  give  these  answers  to  the  question 
when  not  to  have  them. 

Childbearing  should  be  avoided  within  two 
or  three  years  after  the  birth  of  the  last  child. 
Common  sense  and  science  imite  in  pointing 
out  that  the  mother  requires  at  least  this  much 
time  to  regain  her  strength  and  replenish  her 
system  in  order  to  give  another  baby  proper 
nourishment  after  its  birth.  Authorities  are 
insistent  upon  their  warnings  that  too  frequent 
childbearing  wrecks  the  woman's  health. 
Weakness  of  the  reproductive  organs  and  pel- 
vic ailments  almost  certainly  result  if  a  woman 
bears  children  too  frequently. 

By  all  means  there  should  be  no  children 
when  either  mother  or  father  suffers  from  such 
diseases  as  tuberculosis,  gonorrhea,  syphilis, 
cancer,  epilepsy,  insanity,  drunkenness  and 
mental  disorders.  In  the  case  of  the  mother, 
heart  disease,  kidney  trouble  and  pelvic  de- 


iB8    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

f  ormities  are  also  a  serious  bar  to  childbearing. 
Thousands  of  volumes  have  been  written  by 
physicians  upon  the  danger  to  mothers  and 
offspring  of  having  children  when  one  or  both 
parents  are  suffering  from  the  diseases  men« 
tioned  above.  As  authorities  have  pointed  out 
in  all  these  books,  the  jails,  hospitals  for  the 
insane,  poorhouses  and  houses  of  prostitution 
are  filled  with  the  children  born  of  such 
parents,  while  an  astounding  number  of  theii* 
children  are  either  stillborn  or  die  in  infancy. 

These  facts  are  now  so  well  known  that  they 
would  need  little  discussion  here,  even  if  space 
permitted.  Miscarriages,  which  are  partic* 
ularly  frequent  in  cases  of  syphilis  and  pelvic 
deformities,  are  a  great  source  of  danger  to  the 
health  and  even  to  the  life  of  the  mother. 
Where  either  parent  suffers  from  gonorrhea, 
the  child  is  in  danger  of  being  born  blind* 
Tuberculosis  in  the  parent  leaves  the  child's 
system  in  such  condition  that  it  is  likely  to 
suffer  from  the  disease.  Childbearing  is  also 
a  grave  danger  to  the  tubercular  mother.  A 
tendency  to  insanity,  if  not  insanity  itself,  may 
be  transmitted  to  the  child,  or  it  may  be  feeble- 
minded if  one  of  the  parents  is  insane  or  suffers 


AVOIDING  CHILDBIRTH         89 

from  any  mental  disorder.  Drmikenness  in 
the  parent  or  parents  has  been  fomid  to  be  the 
cause  of  feeblemindedness  in  the  offspring 
and  to  leave  the  child  with  &  constitution  too 
weak  to  resist  disease  as  it  should. 

No  more  children  should  be  born  when  the 
parents,  though  healthy  themselves,  find  that 
their  children  are  physically  or  mentally  de« 
f  ective.  No  matter  how  much  they  desire  chil* 
dren,  no  man  and  woman  have  a  right  to  bring 
into  the  world  those  who  are  to  suffer  froni 
mental  or  physical  affliction.  It  condemns  the 
child  to  a  life  of  misery  and  places  upon  the 
community  the  burden  of  caring  for  it, 
probably  for  its  defective  descendants  for 
many  generations. 

Generally  speaking,  no  woman  should  bear 
a  child  before  she  is  twent}''-two  years 
old.  It  is  better  still  that  she  wait 
until  she  is  twenty-five.  High  infant 
mortality  rates  for  mothers  imder  twenty* 
two  attest  this  fact.  It  is  highly  desir- 
able from  the  mother's  standpoint  to  postpone 
childbearing  until  she  has  attained  a  ripe 
physical  and  mental  development,  as  the  bear- 
ing and  nursing  of  infants  interferes  with 


90  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

such  development.  It  is  also  all  important  fe 
the  child;  the  offspring  of  a  woman  who  is 
twenty-five  or  somewhat  older  has  the  best 
chance  of  good  physical  and  mental  equip- 
ment. 

In  hrief,  a  woman  should  avoid  having  chil- 
dren unless  both  she  and  the  father  are  in  such 
physical  and  mental  condition  as  to  assure  the 
child  a  healthy  physical  and  mental  being. 
This  is  the  answer  that  must  be  made  to  women 
whose  children  are  fairly  sure  of  good  care, 
sufficient  food,  adequate  clothing,  a  fit  place 
to  live  and  at  least  a  fair  education, 

A  distinctly  different  and  exceedingly  im« 
portant  side  of  the  problem  must  be  considered 
when  the  women  workers,  the  wives  qnd  the 
mothers  of  workers,  wish  to  know  when  to 
avoid  having  children.  Such  a  woman  must 
answer  her  own  question.  What  anyone  else 
may  tell  her  is  far  less  important  than  what 
she  herself  shall  reply  to  a  society  that  de* 
mands  more  and  more  children  and  which  gives 
them  less  and  less  when  they  arrive. 

What  shall  this  woman  say  to  a  society  that 
would  make  of  her  body  a  reproductive  ma* 
chine  only  to  waste  prodigally  the  fruit  of  her 


AVOIDING  CHILDBIRTH         91 

being?  Does  society  value  her  offspring! 
Does  it  not  let  them  die  by  the  hundreds  ot 
thousands  of  want,  hunger  and  preventable 
disease?  Does  it  not  drive  them  to  the  fac-^ 
tories,  the  mills,  the  mines  and  the  stores  to  be 
stunted  physically  and  mentally?  Does  it  not 
throw  them  into  the  labor  market  to  be  com^ 
petitors  with  her  and  their  father?  Do  we  nc^ 
find  the  children  of  the  South  filling  the  millsj: 
working  side  by  side  with  their  mothers,  while 
the  fathers  remain  at  home?  Do  we  not  find 
the  father,  mother  and  child  competing  with 
one  another  for  their  daily  bread?  Does  soci- 
ety not  herd  them  in  slums  ?  Does  it  not  drive 
the  girls  to  prostitution  and  the  boys  to  crime? 
Does  it  educate  them  for  free-spirited  manhood 
and  womanhood?  Does  it  even  give  them  dur^' 
ing  their  babyhood  fit  places  to  live  in,  fit 
clothes  to  wear,  fit  food  to  eat,  or  a  clean  place 
to  play?  Does  it  even  permit  the  mother  tc 
give  them  a  mother's  care? 

The  woman  of  the  workers  knows  what  so^ 
ciety  does  with  her  offspring.  Knowing  the 
bitter  truth,  learned  in  unspeakable  anguish, 
what  shall  this  woman  say  to  society?  The 
power  is  in  her  hands.     She  can  bring  forth 


92   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

more  children  to  perpetuate  these  ronditions, 
or  she  can  withhold  the  human  grist  from  these 
cruel  mills  which  grind  only  disaster. 

Shall  she  say  to  society  that  she  will  go  on 
multiplying  the  misery  that  she  herself  has 
endured?  Shall  she  go  on  breeding  children 
who  can  only  suffer  and  die?  Rather,  shall 
she  not  say  that  until  society  puts  a  higher 
value  upon  motherhood  she  will  not  be  a 
mother?  Shall  she  not  sacrifice  her  mother 
instincts  for  the  common  good  and  say  that 
until  children  are  held  as  something  better  than 
commodities  upon  the  labor  market,  she  will 
bear  no  more?  Shall  she  not  give  up  her  de- 
sire for  even  a  small  family,  and  say  to  society 
that  until  the  world  is  made  fit  for  children  to 
live  in,  she  will  have  no  children  at  all? 


CHAPTER   VIII 

BIRTH     CONTROL  ^ — A     PARENTS*     PROBLEM     OB 

WOM  AN^S  ? 

THE  problem  of  birth  control  has  arisen 
directly  from  the  effort  of  the  feminine 
spirit  to  free  itself  from  bondage.  Woman 
herself  has  wrought  that  bondage  through  her 
reproductive  powers  and  while  enslaving  her- 
self has  enslaved  the  world.  The  physical  suf- 
fering to  be  relieved  is  chiefly  woman's.  Hers, 
too,  is  the  love  life  that  dies  first  imder  the 
blight  of  too  prolific  breeding.  Within  her  is 
wrapped  up  the  future  of  the  race  —  it  is  hers 
to  make  or  mar.  All  of  these  considerations 
point  unmistakably  to  one  fact  —  it  is  woman's 
duty  as  well  as  her  privilege  to  lay  hold  of  the 
means  of  freedom.  Whatever  men  may  do, 
she  carmot  escape  the  responsibility.  For  ages 
she  has  been  deprived  of  the  opportunity 
to  meet  this  obligation.  She  is  now  emerging 
from  her  helplessness.  Even  as  no  one  can 
share    the    suffering    of    the    overburdened 

93 


94   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

mother,  so  no  one  can  do  this  work  for  her^ 
Others  may  help,  but  she  and  she  alone  cai$ 
free  herself. 

The  basic  freedom  of  the  world  is  woman's 
freedom,  A  free  race  cannot  be  born  of  slave 
mothers.  A  woman  enchained  cannot  choost 
but  give  a  measure  of  that  bondage  to  her  sons 
and  daughters.  No  woman  can  call  herself 
free  who  does  not  own  and  control  her  body. 
No  woman  can  call  herself  free  until  she  can 
choose  consciously  whether  she  will  or  will  not 
be  a  mother. 

It  does  not  greatly  alter  the  case  that  some 
women  call  themselves  free  because  they  earn 
their  own  livings,  while  others  profess  freedom 
because  they  defy  the  conventions  of  sex  rela<^ 
tionship.  She  who  earns  her  own  living  gains 
a  sort  of  freedom  that  is  not  to  be  undervalued, 
but  in  quality  and  in  quantity  it  is  of  little 
account  beside  the  imtrammeled  choice  of 
mating  or  not  mating,  of  being  a  mother  or  not 
being  a  mother.  She  gains  food  and  clothing 
and  shelter,  at  least,  without  submitting  to  the 
charity  of  her  companion,  but  the  earning  of 
her  ovra  living  does  not  give  her  the  develop* 
ment  of  her  inner  sex  urge,  far  deeper  anr^ 


BIRTH   CONTROL  95 

more  powerful  in  its  outworkings  than  any  of 
these  externals.  In  order  to  have  that  develop* 
ment,  she  must  still  meet  and  solve  the  prob* 
lem  of  motherhood. 

With  the  so-called  "  free "  woman,  who 
chooses  a  mate  in  defiance  of  convention,  free«^ 
dom  is  largely  a  question  of  character  and 
audacity.  If  she  does  attain  to  an  unrestricted 
choice  of  a  mate,  she  is  still  in  a  position  to  be 
enslaved  through  her  reproductive  powers. 
Indeed,  the  pressure  of  law  and  custom  upon 
the  woman  not  legally  married  is  likely  to 
make  her  more  of  a  slave  than  the  woman 
fortunate  enough  to  marry  the  man  of  her 
choice. 

Look  at  it  from  any  standpoint  you  will, 
suggest  any  solution  you  willj  conventional  or 
unconventional,  sanctioned  by  law  or  in  de* 
fiance  of  law,  woman  is  in  the  same  position, 
fundamentally,  until  she  is  able  to  determine 
for  herself  whether  she  will  be  a  mother  and  to 
fix  the  number  of  her  offspring.  This  un- 
avoidable situation  is  alone  enough  to  make 
birth  control,  first  of  all,  a  woman's  problem. 
On  the  very  face  of  the  matter,  voluntary 


1^6   WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

motherhood  is  chiefly  the  concern  of  the 
woman. 

It  is  persistently  urged,  however,  that  since 
sex  expression  is  the  act  of  two,  the  responsi* 
bihty  of  controlling  the  results  should  not  be 
placed  upon  woman  alone.  Is  it  fair,  it  is 
asked,  to  give  her,  instead  of  the  man,  the  task 
of  protecting  herself  when  she  is,  perhaps,  less 
rugged  in  physique  than  her  mate,  and  has,  at 
all  events,  the  normal,  periodic  inconveniences 
of  her  sex? 

We  must  examine  this  phase  of  her  problem 
m  two  lights  —  that  of  the  ideal,  and  of  the 
conditions  working  toward  the  ideal.  In  an 
ideal  society,  no  doubt,  birth  control  would  be- 
come the  concern  of  the  man  as  well  as  the 
woman.  The  hard,  inescapable  fact  which  we 
encounter  to-day  is  that  man  has  not  only 
refused  any  such  responsibility,  but  has  indi- 
vidually and  collectively  sought  to  prevent 
woman  from  obtaining  knowledge  by  which 
she  could  assume  this  responsibility  for  her- 
self. She  is  still  in  the  position  of  a  depend- 
ent to-day  because  her  mate  has  refused  to 
consider  her  as  an  individual  apart  from  his 
needs.     She  is  still  bound  because  she  has  ir 


BIRTH   CONTROL  97 

the  past  left  the  solution  of  the  problem  to 
him.  Having  left  it  to  him,  she  finds  that  in- 
stead of  rights,  she  has  only  such  privileges  as 
she  has  gained  by  petitioning,  coaxing  and 
cozening.  Having  left  it  to  him,  she  is  ex- 
ploited, driven  and  enslaved  to  his  desires. 

While  it  is  true  that  he  suffers  many  evils 
as  the  consequence  of  this  situation,  she  suffers 
vastly  more.  While  it  is  true  that  he  should 
be  awakened  to  the  cause  of  these  evils,  we 
know  that  they  come  home  to  her  with  crushing 
force  every  day.  It  is  she  who  has  the  long 
burden  of  carrying,  bearing  and  rearing  the 
unwanted  children.  It  is  she  who  must  watch 
beside  the  beds  of  pain  where  lie  the  babies 
who  suffer  because  they  have  come  into  over- 
crowded homesc  It  is  her  heart  that  the  sight 
of  the  deformed,  the  subnormal,  the  under- 
nourished, the  overworked  child  smites  first 
and  oftenest  and  hardest.  It  is  her  love  life 
that  dies  first  in  the  fear  of  undesired  preg- 
nancy. It  is  her  opportunity  for  self  expres- 
sion that  perishes  first  and  most  hopelessly 
because  of  it. 

Conditions,  rather  than  theories,  facts, 
rather  than  dreams,  govern  the  problem.  They 


08  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

place  it  squarely  upon  the  shoulders  of  woman. 
She  ihas  learned  that  whatever  the  moral 
responsibility  of  the  man  in  this  direction  may 
be,  he  does  not  discharge  it.  She  has  learned 
that,  lovable  and  considerate  as  the  individual 
husband  may  be,  she  has  nothing  to  expect 
from  men  in  the  mass,  when  they  make  laws 
and  decree  customs.  She  knows  that  regard- 
less of  what  ought  to  be,  the  brutal  unavoid- 
able fact  is  that  she  will  never  receive  her 
freedom  until  she  takes  it  for  herself. 

Having  learned  this  much,  she  has  yet 
something  more  to  leam»  Women  are  too 
much  inclined  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of 
men,  to  try  to  think  as  men  think,  to  try  to 
solve  the  general  problems  of  life  as  men  solve 
them.  If  after  attaining  their  freedom,  women 
accept  conditions  in  the  spheres  of  govern- 
ment, industry,  art,  morals  and  religion  as 
they  find  them,  they  will  be  but  taking  a  leaf 
out  of  man's  book.  The  woman  is  not  needed 
to  do  man's  work.  She  is  not  needed  to  think 
man's  thoughts.  She  need  not  fear  that  the 
masculine  mind,  almost  imiversally  dominant, 
will  fail  to  take  care  of  its  own.  Her  mission 
is  not  to  enhance  the  masculine  spirit,  but  to 


BIRTH   CONTROL  991 

express  the  feminine;  hers  is  not  to  preserve 
a  man-made  world,  but  to  create  a  human 
world  by  the  infusion  of  the  feminine  element 
into  all  of  its  activities. 

Woman  must  not  accept;  she  must  chal- 
lenge. She  must  not  be  awed  by  that  which 
has  been  built  up  around  her ;  she  must  rever- 
ence that  within  her  which  struggles  for  ex- 
pression. Her  eyes  must  be  less  upon  what  is 
and  more  clearly  upon  what  should  be.  She 
must  listen  only  with  a  frankly  questioning 
attitude  to  the  dogmatized  opinions  of  man- 
made  society.  When  she  chooses  her  new,  free 
course  of  action,  it  must  be  in  the  light  of  her 
own  opinion  —  of  her  own  intuition.  Only  so 
can  she  give  play  to  the  feminine  spirit.  Only 
thus  can  she  free  her  mate  from  the  bondage 
which  he  wrought  for  himself  when  he  wi'ought 
hers.  Only  thus  can  she  restore  to  him  that  of 
which  he  robbed  himself  in  restricting  her. 
Only  thus  can  she  remake  the  world. 

The  world  is,  indeed,  hers  to  remake,  it  is 
hers  to  build  and  to  recreate.  Even  as  she  has 
permitted  the  suppression  of  her  own  feminine 
element  and  the  consequent  impoverishment  of 
industry,  art,  letters,  science,  morals,  religions 


100  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

and  social  intercourse,  so  it  is  hers  to  enrich  aD 
these. 

Woman  must  have  her  freedom — ^the  fimda- 
jnental  freedom  of  choosing  whether  or  not 
she  shall  be  a  mother  and  how  many  children 
she  will  have.  Regardless  of  what  man's  atti- 
tude may  be,  that  problem  is  hers  —  and  before 
it  can  be  his,  it  is  hers  alone. 

She  goes  through  the  vale  of  death  alone, 
each  time  a  babe  is  born.  As  it  is  the  right 
neither  of  man  nor  the  state  to  coerce  her  into 
this  ordeal,  so  it  is  her  right  to  decide  whether 
she  will  endure  it.  That  right  to  decide  im- 
poses upon  her  the  duty  of  clearing  the  way 
to  knowledge  by  which  she  may  make  and 
carry  out  the  decision. 

Birth  control  is  woman's  problem.  The 
quicker  she  accepts  it  as  hers  and  hers  alone, 
the  quicker  will  society  respect  motherhood. 
The  quicker,  too,  will  the  world  be  made  a  fit 
place  for  her  children  to  live. 


CHAPTER  IX 

CONTINENCE IS      IT      PRACTICABLE      OE 

DESIRABLE? 

THOUSANDS  of  well-intentioned  people 
who  agree  that  there  are  times  and  con* 
ditions  under  which  it  is  woman's  highest  duty 
to  avoid  having  children  advocate  continence 
as  the  one  permissible  means  of  birth  control. 
Few  of  these  people  agree  with  one  another, 
however,  as  to  what  continence  is.  Some  have 
in  mind  absolute  continence.  Others  urge  con- 
tinence for  periods  varying  from  a  few  weeks 
to  many  years.  Still  others  are  thinking  of 
Karezza,  or  male  continence,  as  it  is  sometimes 
called. 

The  majority  of  physicians  and  sex  psychol- 
ogists hold  that  the  practice  of  absolute  con- 
tinence is,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  human 
race,  an  absurdit}^.  Were  such  continence  to 
be  practiced,  there  is  no  doubt  that  it  would 
be  a  most  effective  check  upon  the  birth  rate. 
It  is  seldom  practiced^  however,  and  when  ad- 

101 


102  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

hered  to  under  compulsion  the  usual  result  is 
injury  to  the  nervous  system  and  to  the  gen* 
eral  health.  Among  healthy  persons,  this 
method  is  practicable  only  with  those  who  have 
a  degree  of  mentally  controlled  development 
as  yet  neither  often  experienced  nor  even 
imagined  by  the  mass  of  humanity. 

Absolute  continence  was  the  ideal  of  the 
early  Christian  church  for  all  of  its  communi- 
cants, as  shall  be  seen  in  another  chapter.  We 
shall  also  see  how  the  church  abandoned  this 
standard  and  now  confines  the  doctrine  of 
celibacy  to  the  immarried,  to  the  priesthood 
and  the  nuns. 

Celibacy  has  been  practiced  in  all  ages  by  a 
few  artists,  propagandists  and  revolutionists 
in  ord^r  that  their  minds  may  be  single  to  the 
work  which  has  claimed  their  lives  and  all  the 
forces  of  their  beings  may  be  bent  in  one  direc- 
tion. Sometimes,  too,  such  persons  have  re- 
mained celibate  to  avoid  the  burden  of  caring 
for  a  family. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Thomas  Robert  Malthus,  who 
m  1798  issued  the  first  of  those  works  which 
exemplified  whai  is  called  the  Malthusian  doc- 
trine, also  advocated  celibacy  or  absolute  con- 


GONTINENCE  lOB 

tinence  untU  middle  age.  Malthus  pro* 
pounded  the  now  widely  recognized  principle 
that  population  tends  to  increase  faster  than 
the  food  supply  and  that  unlimited  reproduc- 
tion brings  poverty  and  many  other  evils  upon 
a  nation.  His  theological  training  naturally 
inclined  him  to  favor  continence  —  not  so 
much  from  its  practicability,  perhaps,  as  be* 
cause  he  believed  that  it  was  the  only  possible 
method. 

We  would  be  ignoring  a  vital  truth  if  we 
failed  to  recognize  the  fact  that  there  are  in» 
dividuals  who  through  absorption  in  religious 
zeal,  consecration  to  a  cause,  or  devotion  to 
creative  work  are  able  to  live  for  years  or  for 
a  lifetime  a  celibate  existence.  It  is  doubtless 
true  that  the  number  of  those  who  are  thus  able 
to  transmute  their  sex  forces  into  other  crea- 
tive  forms  is  increasing.  It  is  not  with  these, 
however,  that  we  are  concerned.  Rather  it  is 
with  the  mass  of  humanity,  who  practice  con- 
tinence under  some  sort  of  compulsion. 

What  is  the  result  of  forcing  continence 
upon  those  who  are  not  fitted  or  do  not  desire 
to  practice  it?  The  majority  opinion  of  med- 
ical science  and  the  evidence  of  statistics  are 


104  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

united  on  this  point.  Enforced  continence  is 
injurious — -often  highly  so. 

"  Physiology,"  writes  Dr.  J.  Rutgers  in 
Rassenverhesserungy  "  teaches  that  every  func- 
tion gains  in  power  and  efficiency  through  a 
certain  degree  of  control,  but  that  the  too  ex- 
tended suppression  of  a  desire  gives  rise  to 
pathological  disturbances  and  in  time  cripples 
the  function.  Especially  in  the  case  of  women 
may  the  damage  entailed  by  too  long  continued 
sexual  abstinence  bring  about  deep  disturb- 
ances." 

All  tliis,  be  it  imderstood,  refers  to  persons 
of  mature  age.  For  young  men  and  women 
under  certain  ages,  statistics  and  the  prepond- 
erance of  medical  opinion  agree  that  con- 
tinence is  highly  advisable,  in  many  cases 
seemingly  altogether  necessary  to  future  hap- 
piness. The  famous  Dr.  Bertillon,  of  France, 
inventor  of  the  Bertillon  system  of  measure- 
ments for  the  human  body,  has  made,  perhaps, 
the  most  exhaustive  of  all  studies  in  tliis  direc- 
tion. He  demonstrates  a  large  mortality  for 
the  boy  who  marries  before  his  twentieth  year. 
When  single,  the  mortality  of  French  youths 
averages  only  14  per  thousand;  among  married 


CONTINENCE  10? 

youths  it  rises  to  100  per  thousand  Which 
shows  that  it  is  six  or  eight  times  more  perilous 
for  a  youth  to  be  incontinent  than  continent 
up  to  that  age*  Dr.  Bertillon's  conclusions  are 
that  men  should  marry  between  their  twenty- 
fifth  and  thirtieth  years,  and  that  women  should 
marry  when  they  have  passed  twenty.  With 
the  single  exception  of  young  men  and  women 
below  the  ages  noted,  Dr,  Bertillon's  statis- 
tics tell  a  very  different  story.  And  where  it 
relates  to  celibates,  it  is  a  shocking  one. 

"Dr.  BertiUon  shows  that  in  France,  Bel- 
gium and  Holland  married  men  live  consid- 
erably longer  than  single  ones,"  WTites  Dr. 
Charles  R.  Drysdale,  in  summing  up  the  mat- 
ter in  '^  The  Population  Question/*  "  and  are 
much  less  subject  to  becoming  insane,  crim- 
inal or  vicious/'  From  the  same  studies  we 
learn  that  the  conjugal  state  is  also  more  fav- 
orable to  the  health  of  the  woman  over  twenty 
years  of  age,  in  the  tliree  countries  covered. 

An  analysis  of  criminal  records  showed  that 
inore  than  twice  as  many  immarried  men  and 
women  had  been  held  for  crimes  of  all  kinds 
^an  married  persons.  Rates  based  upon 
10,000   cases    of   insanity    among   men    and 


106  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

women  in  the  same  countries  showed  3.95  pef 
thousand  for  male  cehbates  against  2.17  for 
married  men.  For  single  women  the  rate  was 
3.4  against  but  1,9  for  married  women.  In« 
sanity  was  reduced  one-half  among  women  by 
marriage. 

More  startling  still  is  the  evidence  of  the 
mortality  statistics.  Bertillon  found  that  the 
death  rates  of  bachelors  and  widowers  aver* 
aged  from  nearly  two  to  nearly  three  times  as 
high  as  those  of  married  men  of  the  same  ages. 
Dr.  Mayer,  in  his  Rapports  Con^ugaux, 
showed  that  the  death  rates  among  the  ceUbate 
religious  orders  studied  were  nearly  twice  as 
high  as  those  of  the  laity. 

Can  anyone  knowing  the  facts  ask  that  we 
recommend  continence  as  a  birth-control 
measure? 

Virtually  all  of  the  dangers  to  health  m* 
volved  in  absolute  continence  are  involved  also 
in  the  practice  of  continence  broken  only  when 
it  is  desired  to  bring  a  child  into  the  world.  In 
the  opinion  of  some  medical  authorities,  it  is 
even  worse,  because  of  the  almost  constant  ex- 
citation of  imsatisfied  sex  desire  by  the  pres- 
ence of  the  mate.    People  who  think  that  they 


CONTINENCE  lOT 

believe  in  this  sort  of  family  limitation  have 
much  to  say  about  "  self -control."  Usually 
they  will  admit  that  to  abstain  from  all  but  a 
single  act  of  sexual  intercourse  each  year  is  an 
indication  of  high  powers  of  self-restraint.  Yet 
that  one  act,  performed  only  once  a  year, 
might  be  sufficient  to  "  keep  a  woman  with  one 
child  in  her  '^^omb  and  another  at  her  breast  ** 
during  her  entire  childbearing  period.  That 
would  mean  from  eighteen  to  twenty-four 
children  for  each  mother,  provided  she  sur' 
vived  so  many  births  and  lactations.  Contra* 
ceptives  are  quite  as  necessary  to  these  "  self- 
controUed*'  ones  who  do  not  desire  children 
every  year  as  to  those  who  lead  normal:,  happy 
love  lives. 

From  the  necessity  of  contraceptives  and 
from  the  dangers  of  this  limited  continence 
certain  persons  are,  of  course,  relieved.  They 
are  the  ones  whose  mental  and  spiritual  de- 
velopment is  so  high  as  to  make  this  practice 
natural  to  them.  These  individuals  are  so  ex* 
ceedirgly  rare,  however,  that  they  need  not  be 
discussed  here.  Moreover,  they  are  capable 
of  solving  their  own  problems. 

Few  who  advocate  the  doctrine  of  absolute 


108  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  KACE 

continence  Kve  up  to  it  strictly.  I  met  one 
woman  who  assured  me  that  she  had  observed 
it  faithfully  in  the  thirteen  years  since  her 
youngest  child  was  born.  She  had  such  a 
loathing  for  sexual  unions  however,  that  it  was 
doubtless  the  easiest  and  best  thing  for  her 
to  do. 

Loathing,  disgust  or  indifference  to  the  sex 
relationship  nearly  always  lies  behind  the  ad* 
vocacy  to  continence  except  for  the  conscious 
purpose  of  creating  children.  In  other  words» 
while  one  in  ten  thousand  persons  may  find 
full  play  for  a  diverted  and  transmuted  sex 
force  in  other  creative  functions,  the  rest  avoid 
the  sex  union  from  repression.  These  are  two 
widely  different  situations  —  one  may  make 
for  racial  progress  and  the  happiness  of  the 
few  individuals  capable  of  it ;  the  other  poisons 
the  race  at  its  fountain  and  brings  nothing 
but  the  discontent,  unhappiness  and  misery 
which  follow  enforced  continence.  For  all 
that,  an  increasing  number  of  persons,  mostly 
women,  are  advocating  continence  within 
marriage. 

Sexual  union  is  nearly  always  spoken  of  by 
such  persons  as  something  in  itself  repugnant, 


CONTINENCE  109 

disgusting,  low  and  lustful.  Consciously  or 
unconsciously,  they  look  upon  it  as  a  hardship, 
to  be  endured  only,  to  bring  "  God's  image  and 
likeness  "  into  the  world.  Their  very  attitude 
precludes  any  great  probability  that  their 
progeny  will  possess  an  abundance  of  such 
qualities. 

Much  of  the  responsibility  for  this  feeling 
upon  the  part  of  many  thousands  of  women 
must  be  laid  to  two  thousand  years  of  Chris- 
tian teaching  that  all  sex  expression  is  unclean. 
Part  of  it,  too,  must  be  laid  to  tlie  dominant 
male's  habit  of  violating  the  love  rights  of  his 
mate. 

The  habit  referred  to  grows  out  of  the  as- 
sumed and  legalized  right  of  the  husband  to 
have  sexual  satisfaction  at  any  time  he  desires, 
regardless  of  the  woman's  repugnance  for  it. 
The  law  of  the  state  upholds  him  in  this  re- 
gard. A  husband  need  not  support  his  wife 
if  she  refuses  to  comply  with  his  sexual 
demands. 

Of  the  two  groups  of  women  who  regard 
physical  union  either  \7ith  disgust  and  loath- 
ing,  or  with  indifference,  the  former  are  the 
less  numerous.    Nevertheless,  there  are  many 


110  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

thousands  of  them.  I  have  listened  to  their 
stories  often,  both  as  a  nurse  in  obstetrical 
cases  and  as  a  propagandist  for  birth  control. 
An  almost  universal  cause  of  their  attitude  is 
a  sad  lack  of  understanding  of  the  great  beau- 
ties of  the  normal,  idealistic  love  act.  Neither 
do  they  understand  the  uplifting  power  of  such 
unions  for  both  men  and  women.  Ignorance 
of  life,  ignorance  of  all  but  the  sheer  repro- 
ductive function  of  mating,  and  especially  a 
wrong  training,  are  most  largely  responsible 
for  this  tragic  state  of  affairs.  When  this 
ignorance  extends  to  the  man  in  such  a  degree 
as  to  permit  him  to  have  the  all  too  frequent 
coarse  and  brutal  attitude  toward  sex  matters, 
the  tragedy  is  only  deepened. 

Truly  the  chtu-ch  and  those  "moralists'* 
who  have  been  insisting  upon  keeping  sex 
matters  in  the  dark  have  a  huge  list  of  con- 
cealed crimes  to  answer  for.  The  right  kind 
of  a  book,  a  series  of  clear,  scientific  lectures, 
or  a  common-sense  talk  with  either  the  man  or 
woman  will  often  do  away  with  most  of  the 
repugnance  to  physical  union.  When  the  re- 
pugnance IS  gone,  th<3  way  is  open  to  that 


CONTINENCE  IH 

tipliftment  through  sex  idealism  which  is  the 
birthright  of  all  women  and  men. 

When  I  have  had  the  confidence  of  women 
indifferent  to  physical  union,  I  have  found 
the  fault  usually  lay  with  the  husband.  His 
idea  of  marriage  is  too  often  that  of  providing 
a  home  for  a  female  who  would  in  turn  provide 
for  his  physical  needs,  including  sexual  satis- 
faction. Such  a  husband  usually  excludes  such 
satisfaction  from  the  category  of  the  wife's 
jieeds,  physical  or  spiritual. 

This  man  is  not  concerned  with  his  wife's 
sex  urge,  save  as  it  responds  to  his  own  at 
times  of  his  choosing.  Man's  code  has  taught 
woman  to  be  quite  ashamed  of  such  desires. 
Usually  she  speaks  of  indifference  without  re- 
gret ;  often  proudly.  She  seems  to  regard  her- 
self as  more  chaste  and  highly  endowed  in 
purity  than  other  women  who  confess  to  feel- 
ing physical  attraction  toward  their  husbands. 
She  also  secretly  considers  herself  far  superior 
to  the  husband  who  makes  no  concealment  of 
his  desire  toward  her.  Nevertheless,  because 
of  this  desire  upon  the  husband's  part,  she 
goes  on  "  pretending  "  to  mutual  interest  in 
the  relationship. 


112  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

Only  the  truth,  plainly  spoken,  can  help 
these  people.  The  woman  is  condemned  to 
physical,  mental  and  spiritual  misery  by  the 
ignorance  which  society  has  fixed  upon  her. 
She  has  her  choice  between  an  enforced  con- 
tinence, with  its  health-wrecking  consequences 
and  its  constant  aggravation  of  domestic  dis- 
cord, and  the  sort  of  prostitution  legalized  by 
the  marriage  ceremonj^  The  man  may  choose 
between  enforced  continence  and  its  effects,  or 
he  may  resort  to  an  unmarried  relationship  or 
to  prostitution.  Neither  of  these  people  —  the 
one  schooled  directly  or  indirectly  by  the 
chm^h  and  the  other  trained  in  the  sex  ethics 
of  the  gutter  —  can  hope  to  lift  the  other  to  the 
regenerating  influences  of  a  pure,  clean,  happy 
love  life.  As  long  as  we  leave  sex  education 
to  the  gutter  and  houses  of  prostitution,  we 
shall  have  millions  of  just  such  miserable  mar- 
riage failures. 

Such  continence  as  is  involved  in  dependence 
upon  the  so-called  "  safe  period  "  for  family 
limitation  will  harm  no  one.  The  difficulty 
here  is  that  the  method  is  not  practical.  It 
simply  does  not  work.  The  woman  who  em- 
ploys this  method  finds  herself  in  the  same  pre- 


CONTINENCE  113 

dicament  as  the  one  who  believes  that  she  is 
not  in  danger  of  pregnancy  when  she  does  not 
respond  passionately  to  her  husband.  That 
this  woman  is  more  likely  to  conceive  than  the 
emotional  one,  is  a  well-known  fact.  The 
woman  who  refuses  to  use  contraceptives,  but 
who  rejects  sex  expression  except  for  a  few 
days  in  the  month,  is  Hkely  to  learn  too  soon 
the  fallacy  of  ner  theory  as  a  birth-control 
method. 

For  a  long  time  the  "  safe  period  "  was  sug- 
gested by  physicians.  It  was  also  the  one 
method  of  birth  control  countenanced  by  the 
ecclesiastics.  Women  are  learning  from  ex- 
perience and  specialists  are  discovering  by 
investigation  that  the  "  safe  period  "  is  any- 
thing but  safe  for  all  women.  Some  women 
are  never  free  from  the  possibility  of  concep- 
tion from  puberty  to  the  menopause.  Others 
seemingly  have  "  safe  periods  "  for  a  time,  only 
to  become  pregnant  when  they  have  begim  to 
feel  secure  in  their  theory.  Here  again,  con- 
tinence must  give  way,  as  a  method  of  birth 
control,  to  contraceptives. 

In  the  same  category  as  the  "  safe  period,'* 
as  a  method  of  birth  control,  must  be  placed 


114  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

so-called  "  male  continence."  The  same  prac< 
tice  is  also  variously  known  as  "  Karezza,'* 
"  Sedular  Absorption "  and  "  Zugassent's 
Discovery."  Those  who  regard  it  as  a  method 
of  family  limitation  are  likely  to  find  them- 
selves disappointed. 

As  a  form  of  continence,  however,  if  it  can 
be  called  continence,  it  is  asserted  to  bring  none 
of  the  long  course  of  evils  which  too  often  fol- 
low the  practice  of  lifelong  abstinence,  or  ab- 
stinence broken  only  when  a  child  is  desired. 
Its  devotees  testify  that  they  avoid  ill  effects 
and  achieve  the  highest  possible  results.  These 
results  are  due,  probably,  to  two  factors. 

First,  those  who  practice  Karezza  are 
usually  of  a  high  mental  and  spiritual  de- 
velopment and  are,  therefore,  capable  of  an 
exalted  degree  of  self-control  without  actual 
repression.  Second,  they  have  the  benefit  of 
that  magnetic  interchange  between  man  and 
woman  which  makes  for  physical,  mental  and 
spiritual  wellbeing.  This  stimulation  becomes 
destructive  irritation  in  ordinary  forms  of 
continence. 

The  Oneida  Comunity,  a  religious  group 
comprising  about  130  men  and  150  women. 


CONTINENCE  115 

which  occupied  a  part  of  an  old  Indian  reser- 
vation in  the  state  of  New  York,  were  the 
chief  exponents  of  "male  continence."  The 
practice  was  a  religious  requirement  with  them 
and  they  laid  great  stress  upon  three  different 
functions  which  they  attributed  to  the  sexual 
organs.  They  held  that  these  functions  were 
urinary,  reproductive  and  amative,  each  sep- 
erate  and  distinct  in  its  use  from  the  others. 
Cases  are  cited  in  which  both  men  and  women 
are  said  to  have  preserved  their  youth  and  their 
sexual  powers  to  a  ripe  old  age,  and  to  have 
prolonged  their  honeymoons  throughout  mar- 
ried life.  The  theory,  however,  interesting  as 
it  may  be  when  considered  as  "  continence,** 
is  not  to  be  relied  upon  as  a  method  of  birth 
control. 

Summing  it  all  up,  then,  continence  may 
meet  the  needs  of  a  few  natures,  but  it  does 
not  meet  the  needs  of  the  masses.  To  enforce 
continence  upon  those  whose  natures  do  not 
demand  it,  is  an  injustice,  the  cruelty  and  the 
danger  of  which  has  been  underestimated 
rather  than  exaggerated.  It  matters  not 
whether  this  wrong  is  committed  by  the  church* 
through  some  outworn  dogma;  by  the  states 


116  WOMAN  AKD  THE  NEW  RACE 

through  the  laws  prohibiting  contraceptives, 
or  by  society,  through  the  conditions  which 
prevent  marriage  when  young  men  and  women 
reach  the  age  at  which  they  have  need  of 
marriage. 

The  world  has  been  governed  too  long  by 
repression.  The  more  fundamental  the  force 
that  is  repressed  the  more  destructive  its 
action.  The  disastrous  effects  of  repressing 
the  sex  force  are  written  plainly  in  the  health 
rates,  the  mortality  statistics,  the  records  of 
crime  and  the  entry  books  of  the  hospitals  for 
the  insane.  Yet  this  is  not  all  the  tale,  for 
there  are  still  the  little  understood  hosts  of 
sexually  abnormal  people  and  the  monotonous 
misery  of  millions  who  do  not  die  early  nor 
end  violently,  but  who  are,  nevertheless,  de- 
void of  the  joys  of  a  natural  love  life. 

As  a  means  of  birth  control,  continence  is 
as  impracticable  for  most  people  as  it  is  unde- 
sirable. Celibate  women  doubtless  have  their 
place  in  the  regeneration  of  the  world,  but  it 
is  not  they,  after  all,  who  will,  through  expe- 
rience and  understanding  recreate  it.  It  is 
mainly  through  fullness  of  expression  and  ex- 
perience in  life  that  the  mass  of  women,  having 


CONTINENCE  115 

attained  freedom,  will  accomplish  this  un- 
paralleled task. 

The  need  of  women's  lives  is  not  repression, 
but  the  greatest  possible  expression  and  ful- 
fillment of  their  desires  upon  the  highest  pos- 
sible plane.  They  cannot  reach  higher  planes 
through  ignorance  and  compulsion.  They  can 
attain  them  only  through  knowledge  and  the 
cultivation  of  a  higher,  happier  attitude  to- 
ward sex.  Sex  Ufe  must  be  stripped  of  its 
fear.  This  is  one  of  the  great  functions  of 
contraceptives.  That  which  is  enshrouded  in 
fear  becomes  morbid.  That  which  is  morbid 
cannot  be  really  beautiful. 

A  true  understanding  of  every  phase  of  the 
love  life,  and  such  an  understanding  alone,  can 
reveal  it  in  its  purity  —  in  its  power  of  upUft- 
ment.  Force  and  fear  have  failed  from  the 
beginning  of  time.  Their  fruits  are  wrecks 
and  wretchedness.  Knowledge  and  freedom 
to  choose  or  reject  the  sexual  embrace,  accord- 
ing as  it  is  lovely  or  unlovely,  and  these  alone, 
can  solve  the  problem.  These  alone  make  pos- 
sible between  man  and  woman  that  indissolu- 
ble tie  and  mutual  passion,  and  common  under- 
standing, in  which  lies  the  hope  of  a  higher  raee» 


CHAPTER  X 

COl^TRACEPTIVES  OR  ABORTION? 

SOCIETY  has  not  yet  learned  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  age-long  effort  of  the 
feminine  spirit  to  free  itself  of  the  burden  of 
excessive  childbearing.  It  has  been  singularly 
blind  to  the  real  forces  underlying  the  cause 
of  infanticide,  child  abandonment  and  abor- 
tion. It  has  permitted  the  highest  and  most 
powerful  thing  in  woman's  nature  to  be 
hindered,  diverted,  repressed  and  confused. 
Society  has  permitted  this  inner  urge  of 
woman  to  be  rendered  violent  by  repression 
until  it  has  expressed  itself  in  cruel  forms  of 
family  limitation,  which  this  same  society  has 
promptly  labeled  "  crimes "  and  sought  to 
punish.  It  has  gone  on  blindly  forcing  women 
into  these  "  crimes,"  deaf  alike  to  their  en- 
treaties and  to  the  lessons  of  history. 

As  we  have  seen  in  the  second  chapter  of 
this  book,  child  abandonment  and  infanticide 
are  by  no  means  obsolete  practices.    As  for 

118 


ABORTION  ligi 

abortion,  it  has  not  decreased  but  increased 
with  the  advance  of  civilization.  The  reader 
will  recall  that  one  authority  says  that  there 
are  1,000,000  abortions  in  the  United  States 
every  year,  while  another  estimates  double 
that  number. 

Most  of  the  women  of  the  middle  and  upper 
classes  in  America  seem  secure  in  their  knowl- 
edge of  contraceptives  as  a  means  of  birth  con- 
trol. Under  present  conditions,  when  the  laws 
in  most  states  regard  this  knowledge,  howso- 
ever it  be  imparted,  as  illicit,  and  the  federal 
statutes  prohibit  the  sending  of  it  through  the 
mails,  even  the  women  in  more  fortunate  cir- 
cumstances sometimes  have  difficulty  in 
getting  scientific  information.  Nevertheless, 
so  strong  is  their  purpose  that  they  do  obtain 
it  and  use  it,  correctly  or  incorrectly. 

The  great  majority  of  women,  however,  be- 
long to  the  working  class.  Nearly  all  of  these 
women  will  fall  into  one  of  two  general  groups 
-^-the  ones  who  are  having  children  against 
their  wills,  and  those  who,  to  escape  this  evil, 
find  refuge  in  abortion.  Being  given  their 
choice  by  society  —  to  continue  to  be  over* 
burdened  mothers  or  to  submit  to  a  humiliate 


120  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

ing,  repulsive,  painful  and  too  often  gravely 
dangerous  operation,  those  women  in  whom 
the  feminine  urge  to  freedom  is  strongest 
choose  the  abortionist.  One  group  goes  on 
bringing  children  to  birth,  hoping  that  they 
will  be  born  dead  or  die.  The  women  of  the 
other  group  strive  consciously  by  drastic  means 
to  protect  themselves  and  the  children  already 
born. 

"  Our  examinations,"  says  Dr.  Max  Hirsch, 
an  authority  on  the  subject,  "have  informed 
us  that  the  largest  number  of  abortions  (in 
the  United  States)  are  performed  on  married 
women.  This  fact  brings  us  to  the  conclusion 
that  contraceptive  measures  among  the  upper 
classes  and  the  practice  of  abortion  among  the 
lower  class,  are  the  real  means  employed  to 
regulate  the  number  of  offspring." 

Thus  a  high  percentage  of  v/omen  in  com- 
fortable circumstances  escape  overbreeding  by 
the  use  of  contraceptives.  A  similarly  high 
percentage  of  women  not  in  comfortable  cir- 
cumstances are  forced  to  submit  to  forced  ma- 
ternity, because  their  only  alternative  at 
present  is  abortion.  When  accidental  concept 
laon  takes  place,  some  women  of  both  classes 


ABORTION  121 

resort  to  abortion  if  they  can  obtain  the  serv^^ 
ices  of  an  abortionist. 

When  society  holds  up  its  hands  in  horror 
at  the  "  crime  "  of  abortion,  it  forgets  at  whose 
door  the  first  and  principal  responsibility  for 
tliis  practice  rests.  Does  anyone  imagine  that 
a  woman  would  submit  to  abortion  if  not 
denied  the  knowledge  of  scientific,  effective 
contraceptives?  Does  anyone  believe  that 
physicians  and  midwives  who  perform  abor- 
tions go  from  door  to  door  soliciting  patron- 
age? The  abortionist  could  not  continue  his 
practice  for  twenty-four  hours  if  it  were  not 
for  the  fact  that  women  come  desperately 
begging  for  such  operations.  He  could  not 
stay  out  of  jail  a  day  if  women  did  not  so  gen- 
erally approve  of  his  services  as  to  hold  his 
identity  an  open  but  seldom-betrayed  secret. 

The  question,  then,  is  not  whether  family 
limitation  should  be  practiced.  It  is  being 
practiced;  it  has  been  practiced  for  ages  and 
it  will  always  be  practiced.  The  question  that 
society  must  answer  is  this :  Shall  family  limita- 
tion be  achieved  through  birth  control  or  abor* 
tion?  Shall  normal,  safe,  effective  contracep* 
tives  be  employed,  or  shall  we  continue  to  force 


122  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

women  to  the  abnormal,  often  dangerous 
surgical  operation? 

This  question,  too,  the  church,  the  state  and 
the  moralist  must  answer.  The  knowledge  of 
:;ontraceptive  methods  may  yet  for  a  time  be 
denied  to  the  woman  of  the  working  class,  but 
those  who  are  responsible  for  denying  it  to  her, 
and  she  herself,  should  understand  clearly  the 
dangers  to  which  she  is  exposed  because  of  the 
laws  which  force  her  into  the  hands  of  the 
abortionist. 

To  imderstand  the  more  clearly  the  differ- 
ence between  birth  control  by  contraceptives 
and  family  limitation  through  abortion  it  is 
necessary  to  know  something  of  the  processes 
of  conception.  Knowledge  of  these  processes 
will  also  enable  us  to  comprehend  more 
thoroughly  the  dangers  to  which  woman  is  ex- 
posed by  our  antiquated  laws,  and  how  much 
better  it  would  be  for  her  to  employ  such  pre- 
ventive measures  as  would  keep  her  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  abortionist,  into  which  the  laws 
now  drive  her. 

In  every  woman's  ovaries  are  imbedded  mil-* 
lions  of  ovules  or  eggs.  They  are  in  every 
female  at  birth,  and  as  the  girl  develops  into 


ABORTION  12S 

womanhood,  these  ovules  develop  also.  At  a 
certain  age,  varying  slightly  with  the  individ- 
ual, the  ripest  ovule  leaves  the  nest  or  ovary 
and  comes  down  one  of  the  tubes  connecting 
with  the  womb  and  passes  out  of  the  body. 
When  this  takes  place,  it  is  said  that  the  girl 
is  at  the  age  of  puberty.  When  it  reaches  the 
wonib  the  ovule  is  res  dy  for  the  process  of 
conception  —  that  is,  fertilization  by  the  male 
sperm. 

At  the  time  the  ovule  is  ripening,  the  womb 
is  preparing  to  receive  it.  This  preparation 
consists  of  a  reinforced  blood  supply  brought 
to  its  lining.  If  fertilization  takes  place,  the 
fertilized  ovule  or  ovum  will  cling  to  the  lining 
of  the  womb  and  there  gather  its  nourishment. 
If  fertilization  does  not  take  place,  the  ovum 
passes  out  of  the  body  and  the  uterus  throws 
off  its  surplus  blood  supply.  This  is  called 
the  menstrual  period.  It  occurs  about  once  a 
month  or  every  twenty-eight  days. 

In  the  male  organs  there  are  glands  called 
testes.  They  secrete  a  fluid  called  the  semen. 
In  the  semen  is  the  life-giving  principle  called 
the  sperm, 

T^Tien  intercourse  takes  place,  if  no  preven* 


124.  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

tlve  is  employed,  the  semen  is  deposited  in  ihe 
woman's  vagina.  The  ovule  is  not  in  the 
vagina,  but  is  in  the  womb,  farther  up,  or  per- 
haps in  the  tube  on  its  way  to  the  womb.  As 
steel  is  attracted  to  the  magnet,  the  sperm  of 
the  male  starts  on  its  way  to  seek  the  ovunu 
Several  of  these  sperm  cells  start,  but  only  one 
enters  the  ovum  and  is  absorbed  into  it.  This 
process  is  called  fertilization,  conception  or 
impregnation. 

If  no  children  are  desired,  the  meeting  of 
the  male  sperm  and  the  ovum  must  be  pre- 
vented. When  scientific  means  are  employed 
to  prevent  this  meeting,  one  is  said  to  practice 
birth  control.  The  means  used  is  known  as  a 
contraceptive. 

If,  however,  a  contraceptive  is  not  used  and 
the  sperm  meets  the  ovule  and  development 
begins,  any  attempt  at  removing  it  or  stopping 
its  further  growth  is  called  aborcion. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  women  are  apt  to 
look  upon  abortion  as  of  little  consequence  and 
to  treat  it  accordingly.  An  abortion  is  as  im« 
portant  a  matter  as  a  confinement  and  requires 
as  much  attention  as  the  birth  of  a  child  at  its 
lulltenDa 


ABORTION  12^ 

®*  The  immediate  dangers  of  abortion,"  sayn 
Du  J»  Clifton  Edgar,  in  his  book,  "  The  PraC'^ 
Uce  of  Ohstetrics'^  "  are  hemorrhage,  reten* 
tion  of  an  adherent  placenta,  sepsis,  tetanus, 
perforation  of  the  uterus.  They  also  cause 
sterility,  anemia,  malignant  diseases,  displace* 
ments,  nemosis,  and  endometritis." 

In  plain,  everyday  language,  in  an  abortion 
there  is  always  a  very  serious  risk  to  the  health 
ftnd  often  to  the  life  of  the  patient. 

It  is  only  the  women  of  wealth  who  can 
afford  the  best  medical  skill,  care  and  treat* 
ment  both  at  the  time  of  the  operation  and 
afterwards.  In  this  way  they  escape  the  usual 
serious  consequences. 

The  women  whose  incomes  are  limited  and 
who  must  continue  at  work  before  they  have 
recoverea  from  the  effects  of  an  abortion  are 
the  great  army  of  sufferers.  It  is  among  such 
that  the  deaths  due  to'  abortion  usually  ensue « 
It  is  these,  too,  who  are  most  often  forced  tr 
fesort  to  such  operations. 

If  death  does  not  rasult,  the  woman  who  ha^ 
undergone  an  abortion  is  not  altogether  safe 
from  harm.  The  womb  may  not  return  to  i\^ 
natural  size,  but  remain  large  and  heavy,  tend^ 


126  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

ing  to  fall  away  from  its  natural  positioii, 
Abortion  often  leaves  the  uterus  in  a  condition 
to  conceive  easily  again  and  unless  prevention 
is  strictly  followed  another  pregnancy  will 
surely  occur.  Frequent  abortions  tend  to 
cause  barrenness  and  serious,  painful  pelvic 
ailments.  These  and  other  conditions  arising 
from  such  operations  are  very  likely  to  ruin  a 
woman's  general  health. 

While  there  are  cases  where  even  the  law 
recognizes  an  abortion  as  justifiable  if  recom* 
mended  by  a  physician,  I  assert  that  the  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  abortions  performed  in 
America  each  year  are  a  disgrace  to  civilization. 

The  effects  of  such  operations  upon  a 
woman,  serious  as  they  may  be,  are  nothing 
as  compared  to  the  injin-y  done  her  general 
health  by  drugs  taken  to  produce  the  same 
result.  Even  such  drugs  as  are  prescribed  by 
physicians  have  harmful  effects,  and  nostrums 
reconmiended  by  druggists  are  often  worse 
stilL 

Even  more  drastic  may  be  the  effect  upon 
th^  mibom  child,  for  many  women  fill  their 
iystems  with  poisonous  drugs  during  the  first 
iteeki  ®f  theii*  pregnancy,  only  to  decide  at 


ABORTION  127 

last,  when  drugs  have  failed,  as  they  usually 
do,  to  brkig  the  child  to  birth. 

There  are  no  statistics,  of  course,  by  which 
we  may  compute  the  amount  of  suffering  to 
mother  and  child  from  the  use  of  such  drugs, 
but  we  know  that  the  total  of  physical  weak- 
ness and  disease  must  be  astounding.  We 
know  that  the  woman's  own  system  feels  the 
strain  of  these  drugs  and  that  the  embryo  is 
usually  poisoned  by  them.  The  child  is  likely 
to  be  rickety,  have  heart  trouble,  kidney  dis^ 
order,  or  to  be  generally  weak  in  its  powers  of 
resistance.  If  it  does  not  die  before  it  reaches 
its  first  year,  it  is  probable  that  it  will  have  to 
struggle  against  some  of  these  weaknesses 
imtil  its  adolescent  period. 

It  needs  no  assertion  of  mine  to  call  atten- 
tion to  the  grim  fact  that  the  laws  prohibiting 
the  imparting  of  information  concerning  the 
preventing  of  conception  are  responsible  for 
tens  of  thousands  of  deaths  each  year  in  this 
country  and  an  untold  amount  of  sickness  and 
sorrow.  The  suffering  and  the  death  of  these 
women  is  squarely  upon  the  heads  of  the  law- 
makers and  the  p  aritanical,  masculine-minded 


128  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

person  who  insist  upon  retaining  the 
abominable  legal  restrictions. 

Try  as  they  will  they  cannot  escape  the 
truth,  nor  hide  it  under  the  cloak  of  stupid 
hypocrisy.  If  the  laws  against  imparting 
knowledge  of  scientific  birth  control  were  re- 
pealed, nearly  all  of  the  1,000,000  or  2,000,000 
women  who  undergo  abortions  in  the  United 
States  each  year  would  escape  the  agony  of 
the  sm'geon's  instruments  and  the  long  trail 
of  disease,  suffering  and  death  which  so  often 
follows. 

"  He  who  would  combat  abortion,"  says  Dr. 
Hirsch,  "  and  at  the  same  time  combat  con- 
traceptive measures  may  be  likened  to  the  per- 
son who  would  fight  contagious  diseases 
and  forbid  disinfection.  For  contraceptive 
measures  are  important  weapons  in  the  fight 
against  abortion, 

"America  has  a  law  since  1873  which  pro- 
hibits by  criminal  statute  the  distribution  and 
regulation  of  contraceptive  measures.  It  fol- 
lows, therefore,  that  America  stands  at  the 
head  of  all  nations  in  the  huge  number  of 
abortions." 

There  is  the  case  in  a  r\utsheIL     Family 


ABORTION  129 

limitation  will  always  be  practiced  as  it  is  now 
being  practiced  —  either  by  birth  control  or 
by  abortion.  We  know  that.  The  one  means 
health  and  happiness  —  a  stronger,  better  race. 
The  other  means  disease,  suffering,  death. 

The  woman  who  goes  to  the  abortionist's 
table  is  not  a  criminal  but  a  martyr  —  a  martyr 
to  the  bitter,  unthinkable  conditions  brought 
about  by  the  blindness  of  society  at  large. 
These  conditions  give  her  the  choice  between 
the  surgeon's  instruments  and  the  sacrificing 
of  what  is  highest  and  holiest  in  her  —  her 
aspiration  to  freedom,  her  desire  to  protect  the 
children  already  hers.  These  conditions — - 
not  the  woman — outface  society  with  tliis 
question: 

"  Contraceptives  or  Abortion  —  which  shall 
it  be? " 


CHAPTER  XI 

ARE  PREVENTIVE  MEANS  CERTAIN? 

THERE  are  several  means  of  preventing 
conception  which  are  both  certain  and 
harmless.  What  those  means  are  the  state 
laws  forbid  me  to  say.  If  I  should  defy  the 
state  laws  and  name  those  contraceptives,  the 
federal  laws  would  forbid  this  book's  going 
through  the  mails.  'Nor  can  I,  without  coming 
into  conflict  with  the  laws,  tell  why  these  means 
are  reliable.  It  is  difficult  to  discuss  the  sub- 
ject without  using  franker  language  than  the 
statutes  permit,  and  I  do  not  wish  to  violate 
the  law  in  this  particular  book. 

"  Can  I  rely  upon  this?  Is  it  certain?  Will 
it  prevent  absolutely?"  Such  questions, 
always  asked  by  women  who  seek  advice  con* 
cerning  contraceptives,  testify  both  to  their 
fear  of  involuntary  motherhood  and  their 
doubt  as  to  any  and  all  means  offered  for  their 
deliverance. 

130 


PREVEJSTTIVES  CERTAIN?      131 

Doubt  as  to  the  certainty  of  contraceptives 
arises  from  two  sources.  One  is  the  uninformed 
dement  in  the  medical  profession.  A 
physician  who  belongs  to  this  element  may  ob- 
ject to  birth  control  upon  general  grounds,  or 
he  may  repeat  old-fashioned  objections  to 
cover  his  ignorance  of  contraceptives.  For, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  there  is  an  amazing 
ignorance  among  physicians  of  this  supremely 
important  subject.  The  uninformed  objector 
often  assumes  to  speak  with  the  voice  of 
authority,  asserting  that  there  are  no  thor- 
oughly dependable  contraceptives  that  are  not 
injurious  to  the  user. 

The  other  som  ee  of  distrust  is  the  experience 
of  the  woman  herself.  Having  no  place  to  go 
for  scientific  advice,  she  gathers  her  informa- 
tion from  neighbors  and  friends.  One  offers 
this  suggestion,  another  offers  that,  each  urg- 
ing the  means  that  she  has  found  successful 
and  condemning  others.  All  this  is  very  con- 
fusing and  extremely  disturbing  to  the  woman 
who,  for  one  reason  or  another,  is  living  in  con- 
stant fear  of  pregancy. 

It  is  not  at  all  surprising  that  such  a  state 
irf  affairs  exists.     There  has  been  so  mudi 


132  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

secrecy  about  the  whole  subject  and  so  much 
dependence  upon  amateurish  and  nonprofes- 
sional advice  that  it  is  almost  impossible  for 
anyone  to  procure  reliable  information  or  to 
recognize  it  when  given.  This  is  especially 
true  in  the  United  States  where  there  are  both 
federal  and  state  laws  to  punish  those  who  dis- 
seminate knowledge  of  birth-control  methods. 

Even  under  present  conditions,  however, 
there  is  a  certain  amount  of  reliable  informa- 
tion concerning  methods  of  birth  control.  We 
know  that  there  are  several  methods  of  preven- 
tion which  are  not  only  dependable,  but  which 
can  be  used  without  injury  either  to  the  man 
or  the  woman.  Knowledge  of  what  these 
methods  are  and  how  to  apply  them  should  be 
available  to  every  married  man  and  woman. 
It  is  safe  to  predict  that  in  a  very  few  years 
they  will  be  available. 

Some  methods  are  more  dependable  than 
others,  just  as  there  are  some  more  simple  of 
adjustment  than  others.  Some  are  cheap  and 
less  durable ;  others  are  expensive  and  last  for 
years.  There  are  some  which  for  a  quarter  of 
a  century  have  stood  the  test  of  certainty  in 
Holland,  France,  England  and  the  United 


PREVENTIVES  CERTAIN?      138 

States  among  the  wealthier  classes,  as  the  fall- 
ing birth  rate  among  these  classes  indicates. 
And  just  as  the  reliable,  primitive  wheel* 
barrow  is  antiquated  beside  the  latest  airplane^ 
so,  as  scientific  investigators  turn  their  atten* 
tion  more  and  more  to  this  field,  will  the  awk* 
ward,  troublesome  methods  of  the  past  give 
way  to  the  simpler,  more  convenient  methods 
of  the  morrow. 

Although  the  law  forbids  information  con- 
cerning reliable  means  of  contraception,  it  is 
hardly  likely  that  it  can  be  invoked  to  prevent 
warnings  against  widely  practiced  methods 
which  are  kot  reliable.  The  employment  of 
such  methods  leads  not  only  to  disappointment 
but  often  to  ill  health. 

One  of  the  most  common  practices  of  this 
kind  is  that  of  nursing  one  baby  too  long  in 
the  hope  of  preventing  the  birth  of  the  next. 
The  "  poor  whites  "  of  the  South  and  many  of 
the  foreign-born  women  of  the  United  States 
pin  their  hopes  to  this  method.  Often  they 
persist  in  nursing  a  child  until  it  is  eighteen 
months  old  —  almost  always  until  they  become 
pregnant  again. 

Prolonged  nursing  hm'ts  both  daSld  and 


134  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

mother,  it  is  said.  In  the  child  it  causes  a 
tendency  to  brain  disease,  probably  through 
disordered  digestion  and  nutrition.  In  the 
mother  it  causes  a  strong  tendency  to  deafness 
and  blindness.  If  a  child  is  nursed  after  it  is 
twelve  months  old,  it  is  generally  pale,  flabby 
and  imhealthy,  often  rickety,  one  authority 
points  out,  while  the  mother  is  usually  nervous, 
emaciated  and  hysterical.  If  pregnancy 
occurs  under  these  conditions,  the  mother  not 
only  injm-es  her  own  health  but  that  of  the 
next  child,  often  developing  in  it  a  weakness  of 
Tjonstitution  which  it  never  overcomes. 

Moreover,  prolonged  nursing  has  been 
found  to  be  unreliable  as  a  contraceptive.  We 
know  this  upon  good  authority.  It  should 
not  be  depended  upon  at  all. 

In  the  same  class  is  the  so-called  "safe 
period  "  referred  to  in  another  chapter,  For 
many  women  there  is  never  any  "  safe  period.*'' 
Others  have  "  safe  periods  "  for  a  number  of 
years,  only  to  find  themselves  pregnant  be 
cause  these  periods  have  ceased  withouik 
warning. 

One  of  the  most  frequent  of  all  the  mistakea 
made  in  recommending  contraceptives  is  the 


PREVENTIVES  CERTAIN?     185 

advicje  to  use  an  antiseptic  or  cold-water 
douche.  This  error  seems  to  be  surprisingly 
persistent.  I  am  particularly  surprised  to 
hear  from  women  that  such  douches  have  been 
prescribed  by  physicians.  Any  physician  who 
knows  the  first  rudiments  of  physiology  and 
anatomy  must  also  know  that  necessary  and 
important  as  an  antiseptic  douche  is  as  a 
cleanser  and  hygienic  measure,  it  is  assuredly 
not  to  be  advised  as  a  means  of  preventing 
conception. 

A  woman  may,  and  often  does,  become  preg- 
nant before  she  can  make  use  of  a  douche. 
This  is  particularly  likely  to  happen  if  her 
uterus  is  low.  And  the  woman  who  does  much 
walking,  who  stands  for  long  hours  or  who 
uses  the  sewing  machine  a  great  deal  is  likely 
to  have  a  lew  uterus.  It  is  then 
much  easier  for  the  spermatazoa  to  enter 
almost  directly  into  the  womb  than  it 
would  otherwise  be,  and  the  douche,  no  matter 
how  soon  it  is  used,  is  likely  to  be  ineffective. 
The  tendency  of  the  uterus  to  drop  under 
strain  goes  far  to  explain  why  some  women 
who  have  depended  upon  the  douche  for  years 
suddenly  find  themselves  pregnant.    Do  not 


136  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

tepend  upon  the  douche.  As  a  cleansing 
agent,  it  is  a  necessary  part  of  every  woman's 
loilet,  but  it  is  not  a  preventive. 

Even  if  the  douche  were  dependable,  the 
absence  of  sanitary  convenience  from  house- 
holds in  remote  districts  and  the  difficulty  of 
using  a  douche  in  crowded  tenements  would 
prevent  many  women  from  making  use  of  it. 

Despite  the  unreliability  of  some  methods 
and  the  harmfulness  of  some  others,  there  are 
methods  which  are  both  harmless  and  certain. 
This  much  the  woman  who  is  seeking  means 
of  limiting  her  family  may  be  told  here.  In 
imng  any  method,  whatsoever,  all  depends 
upon  the  care  taken  to  use  it  properly. 
No  surgeon,  no  matter  how  perfect  his  instru- 
ments, would  expect  perfect  results  from  the 
simplest  operation  did  he  not  exercise  the 
greatest  possible  care.  Common  sense,  good 
judgment  and  taking  pains  are  necessary  in 
the  use  of  all  contraceptives. 

More  and  more  perfect  means  of  prevent- 
ing conception  will  be  developed  as  women 
insist  upon  them.  Every  woman  should  make 
it  plain  to  her  physician  that  she  expects  him 
to  be  informed  upon  this  subject.    She  should 


PREVENTIVES  CERTAIN?      137 

refuse  to  accept  evasive  answers.  An  increas- 
ing demand  upon  physicians  will  inevitably 
result  in  laboratory  researches  and  experi- 
mentation. Such  investigation  is  indeed  al- 
ready beginning  and  we  may  expect  great 
progress  in  contraceptive  methods  in  the  near 
future.  We  may  also  expect  more  authorita- 
tive opinions  upon  preventive  methods  and  de- 
vices. When  women  confidently  and  insist- 
ently demand  them,  they  will  have  access  to 
contraceptives  which  are  both  certain  and 
harmless. 


CHAPTER  XII 

iWiLL    BIRTH    CONTROL    HELP    THE    CAUSE    OF 

LABOR? 

LABOR  seems  instinctively  to  have  recog- 
nized  the  fact  that  its  servitude  springs 
from  numbers.  Seldom,  however,  has  it  ap* 
plied  its  knowledge  logically  and  thoroughly. 
The  basic  principle  of  craft  unionism  is  limi* 
tation  of  the  number  of  workers  in  a  given 
trade.  This  has  been  labor's  most  frequent 
expedient  for  righting  its  wrongs.  Every 
unionist  knows,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that  if 
that  number  is  kept  small  enough,  his  organ- 
ization can  compel  increases  of  wages,  steady 
employment  and  decent  working  conditions. 
Craft  unionism  has  succeeded  in  attaining 
these  insofar  as  it  has  been  able  to  apply  this 
principle.  It  has  failed  insofar  as  it  has  been 
unable  to  apply  it. 

The  weakness  of  craft  unionism  is  that  it 
does  not  carry  its  principle  far  enough.    It  ap* 

138 


WILL   LABOR   BENEFIT?      139 

plies  its  policy  of  limitation  of  numbers  only 
to  the  trade.  In  his  home,  the  worker, 
whether  he  is  a  unionist  or  non-unionist, 
goes  on  producing  large  numbers  of  children 
to  compete  with  him  eventually  in  the  labor 
market. 

"  The  history  of  labor,"  says  Teresa  Billing- 
ton-Greig  in  the  Common  Sense  of  The  Pop^ 
ulation  Question/^  is  the  history  of  an  ever 
unsuccessful  effort  upon  the  part  of  man  to 
bring  his  productive  ability  as  a  worker  up  to 
his  reproductive  ability.  It  has  been  a  losing 
battle  all  the  way." 

The  small  percentage  of  highly  skilled,  or- 
ganized workers  lead  in  the  struggle  for  better 
conditions.  Craft  unions,  by  limiting  the 
number  of  men  available  for  any  one  trade, 
manage  to  procure  better  pay,  shorter  hours 
and  other  advantages  for  their  members. 

Disaster,  in  the  form  of  famine,  pestilence, 
tidal  waves,  earthquakes  or  war,  sometimes 
limits  the  number  of  available  workers.  Then 
those  who  live  in  parts  of  the  world  that  are 
not  affected,  or  who  stay  at  home  during  wars, 
reap  a  temporary  advantage.  These  advan- 
tages, however,  are  quickly  offset  by  increased 


140  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

prices,  or  by  competition  for  jobs  when  soldiers 
return  from  war.  This  form  of  limitation  of 
numbers  works  to  the  advantage  of  labor  as 
long  as  it  is  available,  but  great  disasters  are 
not  constantly  in  operation  while  the  worker's 
reproductive  ability  is.  So  in  a  few  years  they 
have  lost  what  natui-e's  destructiveness  won 
for  them. 

The  great  mass  of  the  workers  —  including 
children  and  women  —  are  unskilled  and  un- 
organized. Not  only  that,  they  are  for  some 
considerable  part  of  the  time  seeking  employ^ 
ment.  They  are,  of  course,  poorly  paid.  Thus, 
through  their  low  wages  and  their  seeking  of 
employment,  they  always  come  into  direct 
competition  with  one  another  and  with  the 
skilled  and  organized  workmen.  As  their 
families  live  in  want  and  are  often  diseased, 
they  create  the  chief  social  problems  of  the  day. 
They  bring  children  into  the  world  as  fast  as 
women  can  bear  them.  With  each  child  they 
increase  their  own  misery  and  provide  another 
worker  to  force  do'>vn  wages  and  prolong 
hours,  through  competition  for  employment. 

This  has  been  the  way  of  labor  from  the  be- 
ginning.    It  is  labor '?=  way  in  every  country. 


WILL   LABOR   BENEFIT?      141 

Having  discovered  that  there  is  no  relief  in 
legislation,  labor  organizes  to  limit  its  numbers 
in  certain  trades.  Meanwhile  the  women  of 
the  working  class  go  on  breeding  more  workers 
to  wipe  out  in  the  future  the  advantages  gained 
for  the  present.  In  Paris,  for  instance,  the 
proletarian  quarters  of  the  city  show  a  birth 
rate  more  than  three  times  as  high  as  the  birth 
rate  in  the  well-to-do  sections. 

"  Dr.  Jacques  Bartiilon  furnishes  us  with 
statistics  which  prove  that  the  birth  rate  in  any 
quarter  of  Paris  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  its  degree 
of  affluence,"  says  G.  Hardy  in  How  to 
Prevent  Pregnancy.  "  The  rich  Champs- 
Elysees  has  a  birth  rate  a  third  of 
that  Bellerville  or  of  the  Buttes-Chaumont. 
From  1,000  women  from  the  age  of  fifteen  to 
fifty,  Menimontant  gives  116  births;  the 
Champs-Elysees  thirty-four  births. 

"  It  is  the  same  in  Berlin.  For  1,000  women 
from  the  age  of  fifteen  to  that  of  fifty,  a  very 
poor  quarter  gives  157  births;  a  rich  quarter 
gives  47  births." 

And  so  it  is  the  world  over.  The  very  word 
**  proletarian,"  as  Hardy  points  out,  means 
"  producer  of  children." 

The  children  thus  carelessly  produced 
\mdermine  the  health  of  the  mother,  deepen 


142  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

the  family's  poverty,  destroy  the  happiness  of 
the  home,  and  dishearten  the  father;  all  this 
in  addition  to  being  future  competitors  in  the 
labor  market.  Too  often  their  increasing  num^ 
ber  drives  the  mother  herself  into  industry, 
where  her  beggarly  wages  tend  to  lower  the 
level  of  those  of  her  husband. 

The  first  sickening  feature  of  this  general 
situation  is  the  high  infant  mortality  among 
the  children  of  the  workers.  Many  children 
come  merely  to  sap  the  strength  of  the  mother, 
suffer  and  die,  leaving  to  show  for  their  com- 
ing and  going  only  an  increased  burden  of 
sorrow  and  debt.  The  lower  the  family  in- 
come, the  more  of  these  babies  die  before  they 
are  a  year  old. 

A  survey  of  infant  mortahty  in  Johnstown, 
Pa.,  by  the  federal  Children's  Bureau,  gave 
these  typical  results  for  the  year  1911 : 

Infant  Mortality 

Father's  Earnings  Eate 

Under  $521 197.3 

$521  to  $624 193.1 

$025  to  $779 163.1 

$780  to  $899 168.4 

$900  to  $1,199 142.3 

$1,200  or  over 102. 


WILL   LABOR  BENEFIT?      143 

These  figures  do  not  represent  the  total  in- 
come of  all  families.  Neither  v>dll  money  buy 
as  much  in  1920  as  it  did  in  1911.  Seventv 
per  cent  of  the  people  of  the  United  States 
have  incomes  of  less  than  $1,000.  This  means 
that  from  142  to  197  children  born  into  such 
families  die  before  they  are  one  year  old.  The 
births  and  deaths  of  these  children  represent 
just  so  much  useless  burden  of  anguish  and 
sorrow  to  the  workers. 

Despite  this  high  infant  death  rate,  the 
workers  of  the  United  States  still  have  more 
children  than  they  can  care  for.  There  are 
enough  of  them  left  over  to  provide  3,000,000 
child  laborers,  who  by  working  for  a  pittance 
crowd  their  parents  out  of  employment  and 
force  the  families  deeper  into  poverty. 

When  all  is  said  and  done,  the  workers  who 
produce  large  families  have  themselves  to 
blame  for  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  unem- 
ployed grasping  for  jobs,  for  the  strike 
breakers,  for  the  policemen  who  beat  up  and 
arrest  strikers  and  for  the  soldiers  who  shoot 
strikers  down.  All  these  come  from  the 
families  of  workingmen.  Their  fathers  and 
mothers  are  workers  for  wa^s.    Out  of  the 


lU  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

loins  of  labor  they  come  into  the  world  and 
compel  surplus  labor  to  betray  labor  that  is 
employed. 

Nor  is  this  all.  When  a  workman  of 
superior  strength  and  skill,  protected  by  his 
union,  manages  to  maintain  a  large  or  moder- 
ate sized  family  in  a  degree  of  comfort,  there 
always  comes  a  time  when  he  must  strike  to 
preserve  what  he  has  won.  If  he  is  not  beaten 
by  unorganized  workers  who  seek  his  job,  he 
still  has  to  face  the  possibility  of  listening  to 
the  cries  of  several  hungry  children.  If  the 
strike  is  a  long  one,  these  cries  often  down  the 
promptings  of  loyalty  and  class  interest — • 
often  they  defeat  him  when  nothing  else  could. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  under  handicaps  like 
these  labor  becomes  confused  and  flounders? 
It  has  been  offered  a  multitude  of  remedies  — 
political  reforms,  wage  legislation,  statutory 
regulation  of  hours,  and  so  on.  It  has  been 
invited  to  embrace  craft  and  industrial  union- 
ism, syndicalism,  anarchism,  socialism  as 
panaceas  for  its  liberation.  Except  in  a  few 
countries,  it  has  not  attained  to  aggressive 
power,  but  has  been  a  tool  for  unscrupulous 
politicians. 


WILL  LABOR  BENEFIT?      J 45 

Even  with  the  temporary  advantages  gained 
by  the  wiping  out  of  millions  of  workers  in  the 
Great  War,  labor's  problem  remains  unsolved. 
It  has  now,  as  always,  to  contend  with  the  crop 
of  young  laborers  coming  into  the  market,  and 
with  the  ever-present  "  labor-saving  "  machine 
which,  instead  of  relieving  the  worker's  situ- 
ation, makes  it  all  the  harder  for  him  to  escape. 
Fewer  laborers  are  needed  to-day  for  a  given 
amount  of  production  and  distribution  than 
before  the  invention  of  these  machines.  Yet, 
owing  to  the  increase  in  the  number  of  the 
workers,  labor  finds  itself  enslaved  instead  of 
liberated  by  the  machine. 

"  Hitherto,"  says  John  Stuart  Mill,  "  it  is 
questionable  if  all  the  mechanical  inventions 
yet  made  have  lightened  the  day's  toil  of  any 
human  being.  They  have  enabled  a  greater 
population  to  live  the  same  life  of  drudgery 
and  imprisonment,  and  an  increased  number 
of  manufacturers  and  others  to  make 
fortunes." 

That,  in  a  few  words,  sums  up  the  greater 
part  of  labor's  progress.  We  blame  capitalism 
and  its  wasteful,  brutal  industrial  system  for 
all  our  social  problems,  but  our  nimibers  wer^ 


146  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

vast  and  our  bondage  grievous  before  modern 
fridustry  came  into  existence.  We  may  cursa 
the  trusts,  but  our  subjection  was  accom- 
plished before  the  trusts  had  emerged  from  the 
brain  of  evolution*  We  may  blame  public 
officials  and  individual  employers,  but  our 
burdens  were  crushing  before  these  were  born. 
We  look  now  here,  now  there,  for  the  cause  of 
our  condition  —  everywhere  but  at  the  one  to 
blame.  We  fight  again  and  again  for  our 
rights,  only  to  be  conquered  by  our  own  kind, 
our  own  cliildren,  our  brother's,  our  neighbor's. 
Let  us  carry  to  its  logical  conclusion  the 
principle  of  limitation  which  has  been  partially 
applied  by  labor  imions.  The  way  to  get  rid 
of  labor  problems,  imemployment,  low  wages, 
the  surplus,  unwanted  population,  is  to  stop 
breeding.  They  come  from  our  own  ranks  — ? 
from  om*  own  families.  The  way  to  get  better 
wages,  shorter  hours,  a  new  system  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  labor,  is  to  make  labor's  numbers 
fewer.  Let  us  not  wait  for  war,  famine  and 
plague  to  do  it.  Let  us  cease  bringing  un- 
wanted children  into  the  world  to  suffer  a 
while,  add  to  our  burdens  and  die.  Let  us 
cease  bringing  others  into  the  world  to  compete 


WILL  LABOR  BENEFIT?      147 

with  us  for  a  living.     Let  the  women  workers 
practice  birth  controL 

What  are  the  concrete  things  which  the 
worker  can  gain  at  once  through  birth  con- 
trol? First,  a  small  family  can  live  much 
better  than  a  large  one  upon  the  wages  now 
received.  Workers  could  be  better  fed,  clothed 
and  educated.  Again,  fewer  children  in  the 
families  of  the  woik'^rs  would  tend  to  check 
the  rise  in  the  prices  ot  food,  which  are  forced 
up  as  the  demand  increases.  Within  a  few 
years  it  would  reduce  the  number  of  workers 
competing  for  jobs.  The  worker  could  the 
more  easily  force  society  to  give  him  more  of 
the  product  of  his  labor  —  or  all  of  it.  And 
while  these  things  are  taking  place,  the  slums, 
with  their  disease,  their  moral  degradation  and 
all  their  sordid  accompaniments,  would  auto- 
matically disappear.  No  worker  would  need 
to  live  in  such  tenements  —  hence  they  would 
be  modernized  or  torn  down.  At  the  same 
time,  the  few  children  that  were  being  born  to 
the  workers  would  be  stronger,  healthier,  more 
courageous.  They  would  be  fit  human  beings 
—  not  miserable  victims  of  murderous 
conditions. 


148  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

Birth  control  does  not  propose  to  replace 
any  of  the  idealistic  movements  and  philoso- 
phies of  the  workers.  It  is  not  a  substitute,  it 
precedes.  It  is  of  itself  a  principle  that  lifts 
the  heaviest  of  the  burdens  that  afflict  labor. 
It  can  and  it  must  be  the  foundation  upon 
which  any  permanently  successful  improve- 
ment  in  conditions  is  attained.  It  is,  therefore, 
a  necessary  prelude  in  all  effective  propaganda. 

A  few  years  of  systematic  agitation  for  birth 
control  would  put  labor  in  a  position  to  solve 
all  its  problems.  Labor,  organized  or  imor- 
ganized,  must  take  heed  of  this  fact.  Groups 
and  parties  working  for  a  new  social  order 
must  include  it  in  their  programmes.  No 
social  system,  no  workers'  democracy,  no 
Socialist  republic  can  operate  successfully  and 
maintain  its  ideals  unless  the  practice  of  birth 
control  is  encouraged  to  a  marked  and  efficient 
degree. 

In  Spain  I  saw  a  bull  fight.  It  was  in  the 
great  arena  at  Barcelona.  As  bull  after  bull 
went  down,  his  magnificent,  defeated  strength 
bleeding  away  through  wounds  inflicted  by  hid 
weak  but  skillful  assailant,  I  thought  of  Sie 
world  of  workers  and  their  oppressors. 


WILL   LABOR   BENEFIT?      149 

As  each  bull  was  sent  into  the  arena,  he  was 
confronted  by  one  assailant  and  twenty  con- 
f users.  There  was  but  one  enemy  for  him  to 
face,  but  there  were  twenty  brilliant  flags,  each 
of  a  different  color,  to  distract  his  attention 
from  the  man  who  held  the  weapon.  No 
sooner  was  his  real  antagonist  in  danger,  than 
one  of  the  confusers  fluttered  a  flag  before 
his  anger-maddened  eyes.  With  one  toss  of  his 
horns  he  could  have  ripped  the  life  from  the 
toreador,  but  his  confusers  were  always  there 
with  the  flags.  One  after  another  he  charged 
them,  only  to  spend  the  force  of  his  lunges  in 
the  empty  air.  He  found  that  as  he  was  about 
to  toss  one  of  his  confusers  into  the  air,  he  was 
confronted  by  another  flag,  which  he  charged 
with  equal  futility. 

Finally,  utterly  bewildered  and  exhausted, 
too  spiritless  to  meet  the  attack,  he  falls  under 
the  sword  thrust  of  the  toreador.  And  the 
sun  shines  in  the  deep  blue  overhead,  the  band 
plays,  the  ten  thousand  gayly-clad  spectators 
shout,  while  the  victim  is  dragged  out  to  make 
room  for  another. 

It  is  the  drama  of  labor. 

It  will  be  the  drama  of  labor  until  labor 


150  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

finds  its  real  enemy.  That  enemy  is  the  repro* 
ductive  ability  of  the  working  class  which  ghitB 
the  channels  of  progress  with  the  helpless  and 
weak,  and  stimulates  the  tyrants  of  the  world 
in  their  oppression  of  mankind. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

BATTALIONS  OF  UNWANTED  BABIES  THE  CAUSE 

OF  WAR 

IN  every  nation  of  militaristic  tendencies  we 
find  the  reactionaries  demanding  a  higher 
and  still  higher  birth  rate.  Their  plea  is,  first, 
that  great  armies  are  needed  to  defend  the 
country  from  its  possible  enemies;  second,  that 
a  huge  population  is  required  to  assure  the 
country  its  proper  place  among  the  powers  of 
the  world.  At  bottom  the  two  pleas  are  the 
same. 

As  soon  as  the  coimtry  becomes  overpopu- 
lated,  these  reactionaries  proclaim  loudly  its 
moral  right  to  expand.  They  point  to  the  huge 
population,  which  in  the  name  of  patriotism 
they  have  previously  demanded  should  be 
brought  into  being.  Again  pleading  patri- 
otism, they  declare  that  it  is  the  moral  right 
of  the  nation  to  take  by  force  such  room  as  it 
needs.     Then    comes    war  —  usually   against 

151 


152  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

some  nation  supposed  to  be  less  well  prepared 
than  the  aggressor. 

Diplomats  make  it  their  business  to  conceal 
the  facts,  and  politicians  violently  denounce  the 
politicians  of  other  countries.  There  is  a  long 
beating  of  tom-toms  by  the  press  and  aU  other 
agencies  for  influencing  public  opinion.  Facts 
are  distorted  and  lies  invented  until  the  com* 
mon  people  cannot  get  at  the  truth.  Yet, 
when  the  war  is  over,  if  not  before,  we  always 
find  that  "  a  place  in  the  suji,"  "  a  path  to  the 
sea/'  "  a  route  to  India  "  or  something  of  the 
sort  IS  at  the  bottom  of  the  trouble.  These  are 
merely  other  names  for  expansion. 

The  "need  of  expansion"  is  only  another 
name  for  overpopulation.  One  supreme  ex- 
ample is  sufficient  to  drive  home  this  truth. 
That  the  Great  War,  from  the  horror  of 
which  we  are  just  beginning  to  emerge,  had 
it^  source  in  overpopulation  is  too  evident  to 
be  denied  by  any  serious  student  of  cinrrent 
history. 

For  the  past  one  hundred  years  most  of  the 
nations  of  Europe  have  been  piling  up  terrific 
debts  to  humanity  by  the  encouragement  of 
unlimited  numbers.     The  rulers  of  these  na« 


THE  CAUSE   OF  WAR  155 

tions  and  their  militarists  have  constantly 
called  upon  the  people  to  breed*  breed,  breed-* 
Large  populations  meant  more  people  to  pro*^ 
duce  wealth,  more  people  to  pay  taxes,  mor# 
trade  for  the  merchants,  more  soldiers  to  pra^ 
tect  the  wealth.  But  more  people  also  meant 
need  of  greater  food  supplies,  an  urgent  and 
natural  need  for  expansion. 

As  shown  by  C.  V.  Drysdale's  famous 
'*  War  Map  of  Europe,"  the  great  conflict  be- 
gan among  the  high  birth  rate  countries  — 
Germany,  with  its  rate  of  31.7,  Austria* 
Hungary  with  33.7  and  36.7,  respectively, 
Russia  with  45.4,  Serbia  with  38.6.  Italy  with 
her  38.7  came  in,  as  the  world  is  now  well  in- 
formed through  the  publication  of  secret  trea* 
ties  by  the  Soviet  government  of  Russia,  upon 
the  promise  of  territory  held  by  Austria. 
England,  owing  to  her  small  home  area,  is 
cramped  with  her  comparatively  low  birth  rate 
of  26.3.  France,  among  the  belligerents,  is 
conspicuous  for  her  low  birth  rate  of  19.9,  but 
stood  in  the  way  of  expansion  of  high  birth 
rate  Germany.  Nearly  all  of  the  persistently 
neutral  countries  —  Holland,  Denmark,  Nor* 
way,  Sweden  and  Switzerland  have  low  birth 


154  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

rates,  the  average  being  a  little  over  26. 

Owing  to  the  part  Germany  played  in  the 
war,  a  survey  of  her  birth  statistics  is  decidedly 
illuminating.  The  increase  in  the  German 
birth  rate  up  to  1876  was  great.  Though  it 
began  to  decline  then,  the  decline  was  not  suf- 
ficient to  offset  the  tremendous  increase  of  the 
previous  years.  There  were  more  millions  to 
produce  children,  so  while  the  average  number 
of  births  per  thousand  was  somewhat  smaller, 
the  net  increase  in  population  was  still  huge. 
From  41,000,000  in  1871,  the  year  the  Empire 
was  founded,  the  German  population  grew  to 
approximately  67,000,000  in  1918.  Mean- 
while her  food  supply  increased  only  a  very 
small  per  cent.  In  1910,  Russia  had  a  birth 
rate  even  higher  than  Germany's  had  ever  been 
—  a  little  less  than  48  per  thousand.  When 
czarist  Russia  wanted  an  outlet  to  the  Medi- 
terranean by  way  of  Constantinople,  she  was 
thinking  of  her  increasing  population.  Ger- 
many was  thinking  of  her  increasing  popula- 
tion when  she  spoke  as  with  one  voice  of  a 
"  place  in  the  sun." 

"  For  some  decades,"  said  the  Royal  Prus- 
sian Journal,  in  an  article  quoted  by  the  Mai- 


THE  CAUSE   OF  WAR  155 

thusian  (London)  of  April  15,  1911,  "the 
great  growth  of  German  population  has  been 
almost  entirely  forced  into  the  towns,  since  of 
the  four  millions  of  increase  in  five  years,  only 
a  few  can  find  places  in  agriculture,  as  most 
properties  are  too  small  to  permit  of  letting 
off  a  portion.  And  as  regards  the  larger 
farms,  the  tendency  of  modern,  cheaper  ma* 
chine  methods  is  rather  to  produce  a  saving  of 
the  more  costly  manual  labor. 

"  For  some  time  past  Germany  has  no 
longer  been  in  the  position  of  feeding  her  own 
population,  and  large  quantities  of  food  as  raw- 
materials  have  to  be  imported,  for  which  ex- 
ports have  to  be  exchanged.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  even  this  can  for  long  keep  pace  with 
the  present  rate  of  increase  of  population." 

There  were  other  utterances  which  just  as 
frankly  acknowledged  that,  having  produced 
surplus  population,  Germany  proposed  to  pro- 
cure by  means  of  war  the  expansion  necessary 
to  care  for  it.  Adelyne  More^  in  "  Uncon- 
trolled Breeding,"  a  study  of  the  birth  rate  in 
its  relation  to  war,  quoted  the  Berliner  Post: 
**  Can  a  great  and  rapidly  growing  nation  like 
Germany  always  renoimce  all  claims  to  further 


156  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

development  or  to  the  expansion  of  its  politi- 
cal power?  The  final  settlement  with  France 
and  England,  the  expansion  of  our  colonial 
possessions,  in  order  to  create  new  German 
homes  for  the  overflow  of  our  population  — 
these  are  problems  which  must  be  faced  in  the 
near  future."    This  was  published  in  1913. 

Just  as  frank  was  the  recognition  of  the  true 
cause  of  international  conflicts  by  a  number  of 
British  authorities. 

In  "  Uncontrolled  Breeding,"  the  author 
quotes  the  British  National  Commission's  re- 
port on  The  Declining  Birth  Rate:  "The 
pressure  of  population  in  any  country  brings, 
as  a  chief  historic  consequence,  overflows  and 
migrations  not  only  for  peaceful  settlement, 
but  for  conquest  and  for  the  subjugation  and 
exploitation  of  weaker  peoples.  This  always 
remains  a  chief  cause  of  international 
disputes." 

The  militaristic  claim  for  Germany*s  right 
to  new  territory  was  simply  a  claim  to  the 
right  of  life  and  food  for  the  German  babies 
^ — the  same  right  that  a  chick  claims  to  burst 
its  shell.  If  there  had  not  been  other  millions 
of  people  claiming  the  same  right,  there  would 


THE   CAUSE   OF  WAR  157 

have  been  no  war.  But  there  *were  other 
millions. 

The  German  rulers  and  leaders  pointed  out 
the  fact  that  expansion  meant  more  business 
for  German  merchants,  more  work  for  German 
workmen  at  better  wages,  and  more  oppor- 
tunities for  Germans  abroad.  They  also 
pointed  out  that  lack  of  expansion  meant 
crowding  and  crushing  at  home,  hard  times, 
heavy  burdens,  lack  of  opportunity  for 
Germans,  and  what  not.  In  this  way,  they 
gave  the  people  of  the  Empire  a  startling  and 
true  picture  of  what  would  happen  from  over- 
crowding. Once  they  realized  the  facts,  the 
majority  of  Germans  naturally  welcomed  the 
so-called  war  of  defense. 

The  argument  was  sound.  Once  the 
German  mothers  had  submitted  to  the  plea 
for  overbreeding,  it  was  inevitable  that  im- 
perialistic Germany  should  make  war.  Once 
the  battalions  of  unwanted  babies  came  into 
existence  —  babies  whom  the  mothers  did  not 
want  but  which  they  bore  as  a  "  patriotic 
duty" —  it  was  too  late  to  avoid  international 
conflict.  The  great  crime  of  imperialistic 
Germany  was  its  high  birth  rate. 


158  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

It  has  always  been  so.  Behind  all  war  haa 
been  the  pressure  of  population.  "  Histo* 
rians,"  says  Huxley,  "  point  to  the  greed  and 
ambition  of  rulers,  the  reckless  turbulence  of 
the  ruled,  to  the  debasing  effects  of  wealth  and 
luxury,  and  to  the  devastating  wars  which 
have  formed  a  great  part  of  the  occupation  of 
mankind,  as  the  causes  of  the  decay  of  states 
and  the  foundering  of  old  civilizations,  and 
thereby  point  their  story  with  a  moral.  But 
beneath  all  this  superficial  turmoil  lay  the  deep- 
seated  impulse  given  by  unlimited  multipli* 
cation." 

Robert  Thomas  Malthus,  formulator  of  the 
doctrine  which  bears  his  name,  pointed  out, 
in  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  relation  of  overpopulation  to  war.  He 
showed  that  mankind  tends  to  increase  faster 
than  the  food  supply.  He  demonstrated  that 
were  it  not  for  the  more  common  diseases,  for 
plague,  famine,  floods  and  wars,  hmnan  beings 
would  crowd  each  other  to  such  an  extent  that 
the  misery  would  be  even  greater  than  it  now 
is.  These  he  described  as  "  natural  checks,** 
pointing  out  that  as  long  as  no  other  checks 
are  employed,  such  disasters  are  unavoidable* 


THE  CAUSE   OF  WAR  159 

If  we  do  not  exercise  sufficient  judgment  to 
regulate  the  birth  rate,  we  encounter  disease, 
starvation  and  war. 

Both  Darwin  and  John  Stuart  Mill  recog- 
nized, by  inference  at  least,  the  fact  that  so- 
called  "  natural  checks  " —  and  among  them 
war  —  will  operate  if  some  sort  of  limitation 
is  not  employed.  In  his  Origin  of  Species^ 
Darwin  says :  "  There  is  no  exception  to  the 
rule  that  every  organic  being  naturally  in- 
creases at  so  high  a  rate,  if  not  destroyed,  that 
the  earth  would  soon  be  covered  by  the  progeny 
of  a  single  pair."  Elsewhere  he  observes  that 
we  do  not  permit  helpless  human  beings  to  die 
off,  but  we  create  philanthropies  and  chari- 
ties, build  asylums  and  hospitals  and  keep  the 
medical  profession  busy  preserving  those  who 
could  not  otherwise  survive.  John  Stuart 
Mill,  supporting  the  views  of  Malthus,  speaks 
to  exactly  the  same  effect  in  regard  to  the 
multiplying  power  of  organic  beings,  among 
them  humanity.  In  other  words,  let  countries 
become  overpopulated  and  war  is  inevitable. 
It  follows  as  daylight  follows  the  sunrise. 

When  Charles  Bradlaugh  and  Mrs.  Annie 
Besant  were  on  trial  in  England  in  1877  for 


leo  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

publishing  information  concerning  eontracep* 
tives,  Mrs.  Besant  put  the  case  bluntly  to  the 
court  and  the  jury: 

"  I  have  no  doubt  that  if  natural  checks 
were  allowed  to  operate  right  through  the 
human  as  they  do  in  the  animal  world,  a  better 
result  would  follow.  Among  the  brutes,  the 
Weaker  are  driven  to  the  wall,  the  diseased  fall 
out  in  the  race  of  life.  The  old  brutes,  when 
feeble  or  sickly,  are  killed.  If  men  insisted 
that  those  who  were  sickly  should  be  allowed  to 
die  without  help  of  medicine  or  science,  if  those 
who  are  weak  were  put  upon  one  side  and 
crushed,  if  those  who  were  old  and  useless  were 
killed,  if  those  who  were  not  capable  of  pro- 
viding food  for  themselves  were  allowed  to 
starve,  if  all  this  were  done,  the  struggle  for 
existence  among  men  would  be  as  real  as  it  is 
among  brutes  and  would  doubtless  result  in 
the  production  of  a  higher  race  of  men. 

"But  are  you  willing  to  do  that  or  to  allow 
it  to  be  done  ?  " 

We  are  not  willing  to  let  it  be  done.  Mother 
hearts  cling  to  children,  no  matter  how 
diseased,  misshapen  and  miserable.  Sons  and 
4aughters  hold  fast  to  parents,  no  matter  how 


THE  CAUSE   OF  WAR  161 

helpless.  We  do  not  allow  the  weak  to  depart; 
neither  do  we  cease  to  bring  more  weak  and 
helpless  beings  into  the  world.  Among  the 
dire  results  is  war,  which  kills  off,  not  the  weak 
and  the  helpless,  but  the  strong  and  the  fit, 

"What  shall  be  done?  We  have  our  choice 
of  one  of  three  policies.  We  may  abandon 
our  science  and  leave  the  weak  and  diseased 
to  die,  or  kill  them,  as  the  brutes  do.  Or  we 
may  go  on  overpopulating  the  earth  and  have 
our  famines  and  our  wars  while  the  earth 
exists.  Or  we  can  accept  the  third,  sane, 
sensible,  moral  and  practicable  plan  of  birth 
control.  We  can  refuse  to  bring  weak,  the 
helpless  and  the  unwanted  children  into  the 
world.  We  can  refuse  to  overcrowd  families, 
nations  and  the  earth.  There  are  these  ways 
to  meet  the  situation,  and  only  these  three 
ways. 

The  world  will  never  abandon  its  preventive 
and  curative  science;  it  may  be  expected  to 
elevate  and  extend  it  beyond  our  present  imag- 
ination. The  efforts  to  do  away  with  famine 
and  the  opposition  to  war  are  growing  by  leaps 
and  bounds.  Upon  these  efforts  are  largely 
based  our  modern  social  revolutions. 

There  remains  only  the  third  expedient— =? 


162  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

birth  control,  the  real  cure  for  war.  This  fact 
was  called  to  the  attention  of  the  Peace  Con* 
ference  in  Paris,  in  1919,  by  the  Malthusian 
League,  which  adopted  the  following  resolu* 
tion  at  its  annual  general  meeting  in  London 
in  June  of  that  year: 

"  The  Malthusian  League  desires  to  point 
out  that  the  proposed  scheme  for  the  League 
of  Nations  has  neglected  to  take  account  of 
the  important  questions  of  the  pressure  of 
population,  which  causes  the  great  interna- 
tional economic  competition  and  rivalry,  and 
of  the  increase  of  population,  which  is  put  for- 
ward as  a  justification  for  claiming  increase 
of  territory.  It,  therefore,  wishes  to  put  on 
record  its  belief  that  the  League  of  Nations 
will  only  be  able  to  fulfill  its  aim  when  it  adds 
a  clause  to  the  following  effect; 

" '  That  each  Nation  desiring  to  enter  into 
the  League  of  Nations  shall  pledge  itself  so  to 
restrict  its  birtk  rate  that  its  people  shall  be 
able  to  live  in  comfort  in  their  own  dominions 
without  need  for  territorial  expansion,  and  that 
it  shall  recognize  that  increase  of  population 
shall  not  justify  a  demand  either  for  increase 
of  territory  or  for  the  compulsion  of  other 


THE   CAUSE   OF  WAR  163 

Nations  to  admit  its  emigrants;  so  that  when 
all  Nations  in  the  League  have  shown  their 
ahihty  to  live  on  their  own  resources  without 
international  rivalry,  they  will  be  in  a  position 
to  fuse  into  an  international  federation,  and 
territorial  boundaries  will  then  have  little 
significance.' " 

Asa  matter  of  course,  the  Peace  Conference 
paid  no  attention  to  the  resolution,  for,  as 
pointed  out  by  Frank  A.  VanderUp,  the 
American  financier,  that  conference  not  only 
Ignored  the  economic  factors  of  the  world  situ- 
aion,  but  seemed  unaware  that  Europe  had 
produced  more  people  than  its  fields  could 
feed.  So  the  resolution  amounted  to  so  much 
propaganda  and  nothing  more. 

This  remedy  can  be  applied  only  by  woman 
and  she  will  apply  it.  She  must  and  will  see 
past  the  call  of  pretended  patriotism  and  of 
glory  of  empire  and  perceive  what  is  true  and 
what  is  false  in  these  things.  She  will  discover 
what  base  uses  the  militarist  and  the  exploiter 
make  of  the  idealism  of  peoples.  Under  the 
clamor  of  the  press,  permeating  the  ravings  of 
the  jingoes,  she  will  hear  the  voice  of  Napoleon. 


164  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

the  archtype  of  the  militarists  of  all  nations, 
calling  for  "  fodder  for  cannon.'* 

"  Woman  is  given  to  us  that  she  may  bear 
children,"  said  he.  "  Woman  is  om*  property, 
we  are  not  hers,  because  she  produces  children 
for  us  —  we  do  not  yield  any  to  her.  She  is, 
therefore,  our  possession  as  the  fruit  tree  is 
that  of  the  gardener." 

That  is  what  the  imperialist  is  thinking 
when  he  speaks  of  the  glory  of  the  empire  and 
the  prestige  of  the  nation.  Every  country 
has  its  appeal  —  its  shibboleth  —  ready  for  the 
lips  of  the  imperialist.  German  rulers  pointed 
to  the  comfort  of  the  workers,  to  old-age  pen- 
sions, maternal  benefits  and  minimum  wage 
regulations,  and  other  material  benefits,  when 
they  wished  to  inspire  soldiers  for  the  Father* 
land.  England's  strongest  argument,  perhaps, 
was  a  certain  phase  of  liberty  which  she  guar- 
antees her  subjects,  and  the  protection  afforded 
them  wherever  they  may  go.  France  and 
the  United  States,  too,  have  their  appeals  to 
the  idealism  of  democracy  —  appeals  which 
the  politicians  of  both  countries  know  well  how 
to  use,  though  the  peoples  of  both  lands  are 


THE   CAUSE   OF  WAR  165 

beginning  to  awake  to  the  fact  that  their 
countries  have  been  living  on  the  glories  of 
their  revolutions  and  traditions,  rather  than 
the  substance  of  freedom.  Behind  the  boast 
of  old-age  pensions,  material  benefits  and 
Wage  regulations,  behind  the  bombast  concern- 
ing liberty  in  this  country  and  tyranny  in  that, 
beliind  all  the  slogans  and  shibboleths  coined 
out  of  the  ideals  of  the  peoples  for  the  uses  of 
imperialism,  woman  must  and  will  see  the  iron 
hand  of  that  same  imperiahsm,  condemning 
women  to  breed  and  men  to  die  for  the  will  of 
the  rulers. 

Upon  woman  the  burden  and  the  horrors 
of  war  are  heaviest.  Her  heart  is  the  hardest 
wrung  when  the  husband  or  the  son  comes 
home  to  be  buried  or  to  live  a  shattered  wreck. 
Upon  her  devolve  the  extra  tasks  of  filling  out 
the  ranks  of  workers  in  the  war  industries,  in 
addition  to  caring  for  the  children  and  replen- 
ishing the  war-diminished  population.  Hers 
is  the  crusliing  weight  and  the  sickening  oSi 
soul.  And  it  is  out  of  her  womb  that  those 
things  proceed.  'When  she  sees  what  lies  be- 
hind the  glory  and  the  horror,  the  boasting  and 


166  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

the  burden,  and  gets  the  vision,  the  human 
perspective,  she  will  end  war.  She  will  kill 
war  by  the  simple  process  of  starving  it  to 
death.  For  she  will  refuse  longer  to  produce 
the  human  food  upon  which  the  monster  feeds. 


CHAPTER  Xiy 

WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  MORALITY 

UPON  the  shoulders  of  the  woman  coii- 
scious  of  her  freedom  rests  the  respon- 
sibility of  creating  a  new  sex  morality.  The 
vital  difference  between  a  morality  thus  cre% 
ated  by  women  and  the  so-called  morality  of 
to-day,  is  that  the  new  standard  will  be  based 
upon  knowledge  and  freedom  while  the  old  is 
founded  upon  ignorance  and  submission. 

What  part  will  birth  control  play  in  bring- 
ing forth  this  new  standard?  What  effect  will 
its  practice  have  upon  woman's  moral  develop- 
ment? Will  it  lift  her  to  heights  that  she  has 
not  yet  achieved,  and  if  so,  how?  Why  is  the 
question  of  morality  always  raised  by  the  ob- 
jector to  birth  control?  All  these  questions 
must  be  answered  if  we  are  to  get  a  true  pic- 
ture of  the  relation  of  the  feminine  spirit  to 
morals.  They  can  best  be  answered  by  con- 
sidering, first,  the  source  of  our  present  stand- 

167 


168  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

ard  of  sex  morals  and  the  reasons  why  those 
standards  are  what  they  are;  and,  second,  the 
source  and  probable  nature  of  the  new 
morality. 

We  get  most  of  our  notions  of  sex  morality 
from  the  Christian  church  —  more  partic- 
ularly from  the  oldest  existing  Christian 
church,  known  as  the  Roman  Catholic.  The 
church  has  generally  defined  the  "  immoral 
woman  "  as  one  who  mates  out  of  wedlock. 
Virtually,  it  lets  it  go  at  that.  In  its  practical 
workings,  there  is  nothing  in  the  church  code 
of  morals  to  protect  the  woman,  either  from 
unwilling  submission  to  the  wishes  of  her  hus- 
band, from  imdesired  pregnancy,  nor  from  any 
other  of  the  outrages  only  too  familiar  to  many 
married  women.  Nothing  is  said  about  the 
crime  of  bringing  an  unwanted  child  into  the 
world,  where  often  it  cannot  be  adequately 
cared  for  and  is,  therefore,  condemned  to  a 
life  of  misery.  The  church's  one  point  of  in- 
sistence is  upon  the  right  of  itself  to  legalize 
marriage  and  to  compel  the  woman  to  submit 
to  whatever  such  marriage  may  bring.  It  is 
true  that  there  are  remedies  of  divorce  in  the 
case  of  the  state,  but  the  church  has  adhered 


NEW   MORALITY  169 

strictly  to  the  principle  that  marriage,  once 
consummated,  is  indissoluble.  Thus,  in  its 
operation,  the  church's  code  of  sex  morals  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  basic  sex  rights  of  the 
woman,  but  enforces,  rather,  the  assumed 
property  rights  of  the  man  to  the  body  and 
the  services  of  his  wife.  They  are  man-made 
codes;  their  vital  factor,  as  they  apply  to 
woman,  is  submission  to  the  man. 

Closely  associated  with  and  underlying  the 
principle  of  submission,  has  been  the  doctrine 
that  the  sex  life  is  in  itself  unclean.  It  follows, 
therefore,  that  all  knowledge  of  the  sex  physi- 
ology or  sex  functions  is  also  unclean  and 
taboo.  Upon  this  teaching  has  been  founded 
woman's  subjection  by  the  church  and,  largely 
through  the  influence  of  the  church,  her  sub- 
jection by  the  state  to  the  needs  of  the  man. 

Let  us  see  how  these  principles  have  affected 
the  development  of  the  present  moral  codes 
and  some  of  their  shifting  standards.  'When 
we  have  finished  this  analysis,  we  shall  know 
why  objectors  to  birth  control  raise  the 
**  morality  "  question. 

The  church  has  sought  to  keep  women  ig- 
liorant  upon  the  plea  of  keeping  them  "  pure.'* 


170  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

To  this  end  it  has  used  the  state  as  its  moral 
policeman.  Men  have  largely  broken  the  grip 
of  the  ecclesiastics  upon  masculine  education. 
The  ban  upon  geology  and  astronomy,  because 
they  refute  the  biblical  version  of  the  creation 
of  the  world,  are  no  longer  effective.  Medicine, 
biology  and  the  doctrine  of  evolution  have  won 
their  way  to  recognition  in  spite  of  the  united 
opposition  of  the  clerics.  So,  too,  has  the  right 
of  woman  to  go  unveiled,  to  be  educated,  and 
to  speak  from  public  platforms,  been  asserted 
in  spite  of  the  condemnations  of  the  church, 
which  denounced  them  as  destructive  of  fem- 
inine purity.  Only  in  sex  matters  has  it  suc- 
ceeded in  keeping  the  bugaboo  alive. 

It  clings  to  this  last  stronghold  of  ignorance, 
knowing  thai  woman  free  from  sexual  dom* 
ination  would  produce  a  race  spiritually  free 
and  strong  enough  to  break  the  last  of  the 
bonds  of  intellectual  darkness. 

It  is  within  the  marriage  bonds,  rather  than 
outside  them,  that  the  greatest  immorality  of 
men  has  been  perpetrated.  Church  and  state, 
through  their  canons  and  their  laws,  have  en- 
couraged this  immorality.  It  is  here  that  the 
woman  who  is  to  win  her  way  to  the  new 


NEW   MORALITY  171 

morality  will  meet  the  most  difficult  part  of 
her  task  of  moral  house  cleaning. 

In  the  days  when  the  church  was  striving 
for  supremacy,  when  it  needed  single-minded 
preachers,  proselyters  and  teachers,  it  fastened 
upon  its  people  the  idea  that  all  sexual  union, 
in  marriage  or  out  of  it,  is  sinful.  That  idea 
colors  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome  and 
many  other  Christian  denominations  to  this 
hour,  "  Marriage,  even  for  the  sake  of  chil- 
dren was  a  carnal  indulgence  "  in  earlier  times, 
as  Principal  Donaldson  points  out  in  ^'  The 
Position  of  Women  Among  the  Early  Chris- 
tians/' *  It  was  held  that  the  child  was  "  con- 
ceived in  sin,"  and  that  as  the  result  of  the  sex 
act,  an  unclean  spirit  had  possession  of  it. 
This  spirit  can  be  removed  only  by  baptism, 
and  the  Roman  Catholic  baptismal  service 
even  yet  contains  these  words :  "  Go  out  of 
him,  thou  unclean  spirit,  and  give  place  unto 
the  Holy  Spirit,  the  Paraclete." 

In  the  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe, 
John  William  Draper,  speaking  of  the  teach- 
ing of  celibacy  among  the  Early  Fathers,t 

•  Contemporarv  Eeview,  1889. 
•^  2.V0L  I,  page  426. 


172  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

says :  "  The  sinfulness  of  the  marriage  relation 
and  the  preeminent  value  of  chastity  followed 
from  their  principles.  If  it  was  objected  to 
such  practices  that  by  their  universal  adoption 
the  himian  species  would  soon  be  extinguished 
and  no  man  would  remain  to  offer  praises  to 
God,  these  zealots,  remembering  the  tempta- 
tions from  which  they  had  escaped,  with  truth 
replied  that  there  would  always  be  sinners 
enough  in  the  world  to  avoid  that  disaster,  and 
that  out  of  their  evil  work,  good  would  be 
brought.  Saint  Jerome  offers  us  the  pregnant 
reflection  that  though  it  may  be  marriage  that 
fills  the  earth,  it  is  virginity  that  replenishes 
heaven." 

The  early  church  taught  that  there  were 
enough  children  on  earth.  It  needed  mission- 
aries more  than  it  needed  babies,  and  impressed 
upon  its  followers  the  idea  that  the  birth  wails 
of  the  infant  were  a  protest  against  being  born 
into  so  sordid  a  world. 

Thus  are  we  presented  with  one  of  the 
enormous  inconsistencies  of  the  church  in  sex 
matters.  The  teachings  of  the  "Early 
Fathers "  were  effect  the  advocacy  of  an 
attempt  to  enforce  birth  control  through  abso- 


NEW   MORALITY  173 

lute  continence,  while  later  it  reverted,  as  it 
reverts  to-day,  to  the  Mosaic  injunction  to 
"  be  fruitful  and  multiply." 

The  very  force  of  the  sex  urge  in  humanity 
compelled  the  church  to  abandon  the  teaching 
of  celibacy  for  its  general  membership.  Paul, 
who  preferred  to  see  Christians  unmarried 
rather  than  married,  had  recognized  the  power 
of  this  force.  In  the  seventh  chapter  of  the 
First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  (according 
to  the  Douay  translation  of  the  Vulgate,  which 
is  accepted  by  the  Church  of  Rome) ,  he  said: 

"8  —  But  I  say  imto  you  the  unmarried 
and  the  widows;  it  is  good  if  they  continue 
even  as  I. 

"9  —  But  if  they  do  not  contain  themselves, 
let  them  marry,  for  it  is  better  to  marry  than 
to  be  burnt." 

When  the  church  became  a  political  power 
rather  than  a  strictly  religious  institution,  it 
needed  a  high  birth  rate  to  provide  laymen  to 
support  its  increasingly  expensive  organiza- 
tion. It  then  began  to  exploit  the  sex  force 
for  its  own  interest.  It  reversed  its  position  in 
regard  to  children.  It  encouraged  marriage 
imder  its  own  control  and  exhorted  women  to 


174  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

bear  as  many  children  as  possible.  The  world 
was  just  as  sordid  and  the  birth  wails  of  the 
infants  were  just  as  piteous,  but  the  needs  of 
the  hierarchy  had  changed.  So  it  modified  the 
jstandard  of  sex  moraUty  to  suit  its  own  re- 
quirements—  marriage  now  became  a  sacra- 
ment. 

Shrewd  in  changing  its  general  policy  from 
celibacy  to  marriage,  the  church  was  equally 
shrewd  in  perpetuating  the  doctrine  of 
woman's  subjection  for  its  own  interest.  That 
doctrine  was  emphatically  stated  in  the  Third 
Chapter  of  the  First  Epistle  of  Peter  and  the 
Fifth  Chapter  of  Paul's  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians,  In  the  Douay  version  of  the  latter, 
we  find  this  : 

"  22  —  Let  women  be  subject  to  their  hus- 
bands as  to  the  Lord. 

"  23  —  Because  the  husband  is  the  head  of 
the  wife ;  as  Christ  is  the  head  of  the  Church, 

"24  —  Therefore,  as  the  Church  is  subject 
to  Christ,  so  let  the  wives  be  to  their  husbands 
m  all  things." 

These  doctrines,  together  with  the  teaching 
that  sex  life  is  of  itself  unclean,  formed  the 
basis  of  morality  as  fixed  by  the  Roman  church. 


NEW  MORALITY  175 

Nor  does  the  King  James  version  of  the 
Bible,  generally  used  by  Protestant  churches 
to-day,  differ  greatly  in  these  particulars  from 
the  accepted  Roman  Catholic  version,  as  a 
comparison  will  show. 

If  Christianity  turned  the  clock  of  general 
progress  back  a  thousand  years,  it  turned  back 
the  clock  two  thousand  years  for  woman.  Its 
greatest  outrage  upon  her  was  to  forbid  her  to 
control  the  function  of  motherhood  under  any 
circumstances,  thus  limiting  her  life's  work 
to  bringing  forth  and  rearing  children.  Coin- 
cident with  this,  the  churchmen  deprived  her 
of  her  place  in  and  before  the  courts,  in;  the 
schools,  in  literature,  art  and  society.  They 
shut  from  her  heart  and  her  mind  the  knowl- 
edge of  her  love  life  and  her  reproductive 
functions.  They  chained  her  to  the  position 
into  which  they  had  thrust  her,  so  that  it  is  only 
after  centuries  of  effort  that  she  is  even  be- 
ginning to  regain  what  was  wrested  from  her^ 

"  Christianity  had  no  favorable  effect  upoq 
women,"  says  Donaldson,  "  but  tended  to 
lower  their  character  and  contract  the  range  of 
their  activity.  At  the  time  when  Christianity 
dawned  upon  the  world,  women  had  attained 


176  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

great  freedom,  power  and  influence  in  the 
Roman  empire.  Tradition  was  in  favor  of  re- 
striction, but  by  a  concurrence  cf  circum- 
stances, women  had  been  liberated  from  the  en- 
slaving fetters  of  the  old  legal  forms.  They 
enjoyed  freedom  of  intercourse  in  society. 
They  walked  in  the  public  thoroughfares  with 
veils  that  did  not  hide  their  faces.  They  dined 
in  the  company  of  men.  They  studied  litera- 
ture and  philosophy.  They  took  part  in  polit- 
ical movements.  They  were  allowed  to  defend 
their  own  law  cases  if  they  liked,  and  they 
helped  their  husbands  in  the  government  of 
provinces  and  the  writing  of  books." 

And  again:  "One  would  have  imagined 
that  Christianity  would  have  favored  the  ex- 
tension of  woman's  freedom.  In  a  very  short 
time  women  are  seen  only  in  two  capacities  — 
as  martyrs  and  deaconesses  (or  nuns).  Now 
what  the  early  Christians  did  was  to  strike  the 
male  out  of  the  definition  of  man,  and  human 
being  out  of  the  definition  of  woman.  Man 
was  a  human  being  made  to  serve  the  highest 
and  noblest  purposes;  woman  was  a  female, 
made  to  serve  onlv  one." 

Thus  the  position  attained  by  women  of 


NEW   MORALITY  17^ 

Greece  and  Rome  through  the  exercise  of 
family  limitation,  and  in  a  considerable  degree 
of  voluntary  motherhood,  was  swept  away  by 
the  rising  tide  of  Christianity.  It  would  seem 
that  this  pernicious  result  was  premeditated, 
and  that  from  the  very  early  days  of  Christi- 
anity, there  were  among  the  hierarchy  those 
who  recognized  the  creative  power  of  the  fem- 
inine spirit,  the  force  of  which  they  sought  to 
turn  to  their  own  uses.  Certain  it  is  that  the 
hierarchy  created  about  the  whole  love  life  of 
woman  an  atmosphere  of  degradation. 

Fear  and  shame  have  stood  as  grim  guard- 
ians against  the  gate  of  knowledge  and  con- 
structive idealism.  The  sex  life  of  women 
has  been  clouded  in  darkness,  restrictive,  re- 
pressive and  morbid.  Women  have  not  had 
the  opportunity  to  know  themselves,  nor  have 
they  been  permitted  to  give  play  to  their  inner 
natures,  that  they  might  create  a  morality 
practical,  idealistic  and  high  for  their  own 
needs. 

On  the  other  hand,  church  and  state  have 
forbidden  women  to  leave  their  legal  mates, 
or  to  refuse  to  submit  to  the  marital  embrace, 
no  matter  how  filthy,  drunken,  diseased  or 


178  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

otherwise  repulsive  the  man  might  be  —  no 
matter  how  much  of  a  crime  it  might  be  to 
bring  to  birth  a  child  by  him. 

Woman  was  and  is  condemned  to  a  system 
imder  which  the  lawful  rapes  exceed  the  un- 
lawful ones  a  million  to  one.  She  has  had 
nothing  to  say  as  to  whether  she  shall  have 
strength  sufficient  to  give  a  child  a  fair 
physical  and  mental  start  in  life;  she  has  had 
as  little  to  do  with  determining  whether  her 
own  body  shall  be  wrecked  by  excessive  child- 
bearing.  She  has  been  adjured  not  to  com- 
plain of  the  burden  of  caring  for  children  she 
iias  not  wanted.  Only  the  married  woman  who 
has  been  constantly  loved  by  the  most  under- 
standing and  considerate  of  husbands  has 
escaped  these  horrors.  Besides  the  wrongs 
done  to  women  in  marriage,  those  involved  in 
promiscuity,  infidelities  and  rapes  become  in- 
consequential in  nature  and  in  number. 

Out  of  woman's  inner  nature,  in  rebellion 
against  these  conditions,  is  rising  the  new 
morality.  Let  it  be  realized  that  this  creation 
of  new  sex  ideals  is  a  challenge  to  the  church. 
Being  a  challenge  to  the  church,  it  is  also,  in 
less  degree,  a  challenge  to  the  state.     The 


NEW   MORALITY  179 

woman  who  takes  a  fearless  stand  for  the  in- 
coming sex  ideals  must  expect  to  be  assailed 
by  reactionaries  of  every  kind.  Imperialists 
and  exploiters  will  jSght  hardest  in  the  open, 
but  the  ecclesiastic  will  fight  longest  in  the 
dark.  He  understands  the  situation  best  of 
all ;  he  best  knows  what  reaction  he  has  to  fear 
from  the  morals  of  women  who  have  attained 
liberty.  For,  be  it  repeated,  the  church  has 
always  known  and  feared  the  spiritual  poten* 
tialities  of  woman's  freedom. 

And  in  this  lies  the  answer  to  the  question 
why  the  opponent  of  birth  control  raises  the 
moral  issue.  Sex  morals  for  women  have  been 
one-sided ;  they  have  been  purely  negative,  in- 
hibitory and  repressive.  They  have  been  fixed 
by  agencies  which  have  sought  to  keep  women 
enslaved ;  which  have  been  determined,  even  as 
they  are  now,  to  use  woman  solely  as  an  asset 
to  the  church,  the  state  and  the  man„  Any 
means  of  freedom  which  will  enable  women  to 
live  and  think  for  themselves  first,  will  be  at- 
tacked as  immoral  by  these  selfish  agencies. 

What  effect  will  the  practice  of  birth  con- 
trol have  upon  woman's  moral  development? 
As  we  have  seen  in  other  chapters,  it  will  break 


180  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

her  bonds.  It  will  free  her  to  understand  the 
cravings  and  soul  needs  of  herself  and  other 
women.  It  will  enable  her  to  develop  her  love 
nature  separate  from  and  independent  of  her 
maternal  nature. 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  woman 
whose  children  are  desired  and  are  of  such 
number  that  she  can  not  only  give  them  ade- 
quate care  but  keep  herself  mentally  and 
spiritually  alive,  as  well  as  physically  fit,  can 
discharge  her  duties  to  her  children  much  bet- 
ter than  the  overworked,  broken  and  querul- 
ous mother  of  a  large,  unwanted  family. 

Thus  the  way  is  open  to  her  for  a  twofold 
development;  first,  through  her  own  full 
rounded  life,  and  next,  through  her  loving,  un- 
strained, full-hearted  relationship  with  her  off- 
spring. The  bloom  of  mother  love  will  have 
an  opportunity  to  infuse  itself  into  her  soul 
and  make  her,  indeed,  the  fond,  affectionate 
guardian  of  her  offspring  that  sentiment  now 
pictures  her  but  hard  facts  deny  her  the 
privilege  of  being.  She  will  preserve  also  her 
love  life  with  her  mate  in  its  ripening  perfec- 
tJon.     She  will  want  children  with  a  deeper 


NEW   MORALITY  18i: 

passion,  and  will  love  them  with  a  far  greater: 
love. 

In  spite  of  the  age-long  teaching  that  sex 
life  in  itself  is  unclean,  the  world  has  been 
moving  to  a  realization  that  a  great  love  be- 
tween a  man  and  woman  is  a  holy  thing, 
freighted  with  great  possibilities  for  spiritual 
growth.  The  fear  of  unwanted  childi^en  re- 
moved, thp  assurance  that  she  will  have  a  suf- 
ficient amount  of  time  in  which  to  develop  hei^ 
love  life  to  its  greatest  beauty,  with  its  com 
radesliip  in  many  fields  —  these  will  lift 
woman  by  the  very  soaring  quality  of  her  in- 
nermost self  to  spiritual  heights  that  few  have 
attained.  Then  the  coming  of  eagerly  desired 
children  \^dll  but  enrich  life  in  all  its  avenues, 
rather  than  enslave  and  impoverish  it  as  do  un- 
wanted ones  to-day. 

A^tTiat  healthier  grounds  for  the  growth  of 
sound  morals  could  possibly  exist  than  the 
ample  spiritual  life  of  the  woman  just  de- 
picted? Free  to  follow  the  feminine  spirit, 
which  dwells  in  the  sanctuary  of  her  nature, 
she  will,  in  her  daily  life,  give  expression  to 
that  high  idealism  which  is  the  fruit  of  that 
spirit  when  it  is  unhampered  and  unviolatedo 


]L82  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

The  love  for  her  mate  will  flower  in  beauty  of 
deeds  that  are  pure  because  they  are  the 
natural  expression  of  her  physical,  mental  and 
spiritual  being.  The  love  for  desired  children 
will  come  to  blossom  in  a  spirituality  that  is 
high  because  it  is  free  to  reach  the  heights. 

The  moral  force  of  woman's  nature  will  be 
imchained  —  and  of  its  own  dynamic  power 
will  uplift  her  to  a  plane  unimagined  by  those 
holding  fast  to  the  old  standards  of  church 
morality.  Love  is  the  greatest  force  of  the 
universe;  freed  of  its  bonds  of  submission  and 
unwanted  progeny,  it  will  formulate  and  com- 
pel of  its  own  nature  observance  to  standards 
of  purity  far  beyond  the  highest  conception  of 
the  average  moralist.  The  feminine  spirit, 
animated  by  joyous,  triumphant  love,  will 
make  its  own  high  tenets  of  morality.  Free 
womanhood,  out  of  the  depths  of  its  rich  ex« 
periences,  will  observe  and  comply  with  the 
inner  demands  of  its  being.  The  manner  in 
which  it  learns  to  do  this  best  may  be  said 
to  be  the  moral  law  of  woman's  being.  So* 
in  whatever  words  the  new  morality  may  ulti« 
mately  be  expressed,  we  can  at  least  be  sure 
that  it  will  meet  certain  needs. 


NEW   MORALITY  183 

First  of  all,  it  will  meet  the  physical  and 
psychic  requirements  of  the  woman  herself, 
for  she  cannot  adequately  perform  the  fem- 
inine functions  until  these  are  met.  Second, 
it  will  meet  the  needs  of  the  child  to  be  con- 
ceived in  a  love  which  is  eager  to  bring  forth 
a  new  life,  to  be  brought  into  a  home  where 
love  and  harmony  prevail,  a  home  in  which 
proper  preparation  has  been  made  for  its 
coming. 

This  situation  implies  in  turn  a  number  of 
conditions.  Foremost  among  them  is  woman's 
knowledge  of  her  sexual  natin^e,  both  in  its 
physiology  and  its  spiritual  significance.  She 
must  not  only  know  her  own  body,  its  care  and 
its  needs,  but  she  must  know  the  power  of  the 
sex  force,  its  use,  its  abuse,  as  well  as  how  to 
direct  it  for  the  benefit  of  the  race.  Thus  she 
can  transmit  to  her  children  an  equipment  that 
will  enable  them  to  break  the  bonds  that  have 
held  humanity  enslaved  for  ages. 

To  achieve  this  she  must  have  a  knowledge 
of  birth  control.  She  must  also  assert  and 
maintain  her  right  to  refuse  the  marital  em- 
brace except  when  urged  by  her  inner  nature* 

The  truth  makes  free.    Viewed  in  its  true 


184  WOMAjV  and  the  NEW  RACE 

aspect,  the  very  beauty  and  wonder  of  the 
creative  impulse  will  make  evident  its  essen- 
tial  purity.  We  will  then  instinctively  idealize 
and  keep  holy  that  physical-spiritual  expres- 
sion which  is  the  foundation  of  all  human  life, 
and  in  that  conception  of  sex  will  the  race  be 
exalted. 

What  can  we  expect  of  offspring  that  are 
the  result  of  "  accidents  " —  who  are  brought 
into  being  undesired  and  in  fear?  What  can 
we  hope  for  from  a  morality  that  surrounds 
each  physical  union,  for  the  woman,  with  an 
atmosphere  of  submission  and  shame?  What 
can  we  say  for  a  morality  that  leaves  the  hus- 
band at  liberty  to  communicate  to  his  wife  a 
venereal  disease? 

Subversion  of  the  sex  urge  to  ulterior  pur- 
poses has  dragged  it  to  the  level  of  the  gutter. 
Recognition  of  its  true  nature  and  purpose 
must  lift  the  race  to  spiritual  freedom.  Out 
of  our  growing  knowledge  we  are  evolving 
new  and  saner  ideas  of  life  in  general.  Out 
of  our  increasing  sex  knowledge  we  shall 
evolve  new  ideals  of  sex.  These  ideals  will 
spring  from  the  innermost  needs  of  women. 
They  will  serve  these  needs  and  express  them; 


NEW   MORALITY  185 

They  will  be  the  foundation  of  a  moral  code 
that  will  tend  to  make  fruitful  the  impulse 
which  is  the  source,  the  soul  and  the  crowning 
glory  of  our  sexual  natures. 

When  women  have  raised  the  standards  of 
sex  ideals  and  purged  the  human  mind  of  its 
unclean  conception  of  sex,  the  fountain  of  the 
race  will  have  been  cleansed.  Mothers  will 
bring  forth,  in  purity  and  in  joy,  a  race  that 
IS  morally  and  spiritually  free. 


CHAPTER  XV 

LEGISLATING  WOMAN^S  MOEALS 

NE  of  the  important  duties  before  those 
women  who  are  demanding  birth  con- 
trol as  a  means  to  a  New  Race  is  the  changing 
of  our  so-called  obscenity  laws.  This  will  be 
no  easy  undertaking;  it  is  usually  much  easier 
to  enact  statutes  than  to  revise  them.  Laws 
are  seldom  exactly  what  they  seem,  rarely 
what  their  advocates  claim  for  them. 
The  "  obscenity "  statutes  are  particularly 
deceptive. 

Enacted,  avowedly,  to  protect  society 
against  the  obscene  and  the  lewd,  they  make 
no  distinction  between  the  scientific  works  of 
human  emancipators  like  Forel  and  Ellis  and 
printed  matter  such  as  they  are  ostensibly 
aimed  at.  Naturally  enough,  then,  detectives 
and  narow-minded  judges  and  prosecutors 
who  would  chuckle  over  pictures  that  would 
make  a  clean-minded  woman  shudder,  unite  to 

186 


LEGISLATION  187 

suppress  the  scientific  works  and  the  birth-con- 
trol treatises  which  would  enable  men  and 
women  to  attain  higher  physical,  mental,  moral 
and  spiritual  standards. 

Woman,  bent  upon  her  freedom  and  seek- 
ing to  make  a  better  world,  will  not  permit  the 
indecent  and  unclean  forces  of  reaction  to 
mask  themselves  forever  behind  the  plea  that 
it  is  necessary  to  keep  her  in  ignorance  to  pre- 
serve her  purity.  In  the  birth-control  move- 
mentp  she  has  already  begun  to  fight  for  her 
right  to  have,  without  legal  interference,  all 
knowledge  pertaining  to  her  sex  nature.  This 
is  the  third  and  most  important  of  the  epoch* 
making  battles  for  general  liberty  upon 
American  soiL  It  is  most  important  because 
it  is  to  purify  the  very  fountain  of  the  race 
and  make  the  race  completely  free. 

The  first  and  most  dramatic  of  the  three 
great  struggles  for  liberty  reached  its  apex,  as 
we  know,  in  the  American  Revolution.  It  had 
for  its  object  the  right  to  hold  such  political 
beliefs  as  one  might  choose,  and  to  act  in  ac- 
cordance with  those  beliefs.  If  this  political 
freedom  is  now  lost  to  us,  it  is  because  we  did 
not  hold  strongly  enough  to  those  liberties 


188  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

fought  for  by  our  forefathers. 

Nearly  a  hundred  years  after  the  Revolu- 
tion the  battle  for  religious  liberty  came  to  a 
climax  in  the  career  of  Robert  G.  Ingersoll. 
His  championship  of  the  much  vaunted  and 
little  exercised  freedom  of  religious  opinion 
swept  the  blasphemy  laws  into  the  lumber 
room  of  outworn  tyrannies.  Those  yet  re- 
maining upon  the  statute  books  are  invoked 
but  rarely,  and  then  the  effort  to  enforce  them 
is  ridiculous. 

Within  a  few  years  the  tragic  combination 
of  false  moral  standards  and  infamous  ob- 
scenity laws  will  be  as  ridiculous  in  the  public 
mind  as  are  the  now  all  but  forgotten  blas- 
phemy laws.  If  the  obscenity  laws  are  not 
radically  revised  or  repealed,  few  reactionaries 
will  dare  to  face  the  public  derision  that  will 
greet  their  attempts  to  use  them  to  stay 
woman's  progress. 

The  French  have  a  saying  concerning  *'  mort 
main  " —  the  dead  hand.  This  hand  of  the 
past  reaches  up  into  the  present  to  smother 
the  rising  flame  of  modern  ideals,  to  reforge 
our  chains  when  we  have  broken  them,  to  arrest 
progress.    It  is  the  hand  of  such  as  have  lived 


LEGISLATION  189 

on  earth  but  have  not  loved  humanity.  At  the 
call  of  those  who  fear  progress  and  freedom, 
it  rises  from  the  gloom  of  forgotten  things  to 
oppress  the  living. 

It  is  the  dead  hand  that  holds  imprisoned 
within  the  obscenity  laws  all  direct  informa- 
tion concerning  birth  control.  It  is  the  dead 
hand  that  thus  compels  millions  of  American 
women  to  remain  in  the  bondage  of  maternity. 

Previous  to  the  year  1868,  the  obscenity  laws 
of  the  various  states  in  the  Union  contained  no 
specific  prohibition  of  information  concerning 
contraceptives.  In  that  year,  however,  the 
General  Assembly  of  New  York  passed  an  act 
which  specifically  included  the  subject  of  con- 
traceptives. The  act  made  it  exactly  as  great 
an  offense  to  give  such  information  as  to  ex- 
hibit the  sort  of  pictures  and  writings  at  which 
the  legislation  was  ostensibly  aimed. 

In  1873,  the  late  Anthony  Comstock,  who 
with  a  list  cf  contributors,  most  of  whom  did 
not  realize  the  real  effects  of  his  work,  consti- 
tuted the  so-called  Society  for  the  Suppression 
of  Vice,  succeeded  in  obtaining  the  passage  of 
the  federal  obscenity  act.     This  act  was  pre- 


190  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

sented  as  one  to  prevent  the  circulation  of 
pornographic  literature  and  pictures  amon^ 
school  children.  As  such,  it  was  rushed 
through  with  two  hundred  sixty  other  acts  in 
the  closing  hours  of  the  Congress.  This  act 
made  it  a  crime  to  use  the  mails  to  convey  con- 
traceptives or  information  concerning  contra- 
ceptives. Other  acts  later  made  the  original 
law  applicable  to  express  companies  and  other 
common  carriers,  as  well  as  to  the  mails. 

With  this  precedent  established  —  a  preced- 
ent which  a  majority  of  the  congressmen  could 
hardly  have  understood  because  of  the  hasty 
passage  of  the  act  —  Comstock  secured  the 
enactment  of  state  laws  to  the  same  effect. 
Meanwhile,  the  provisions  regarding  contra- 
ceptives had  been  dropped  from  the  amended 
New  York  State  law  of  1872.  In  1873,  how- 
ever, a  new  section,  said  to  have  been  drafted 
by  Comstock  himself,  was  substituted  for  the 
one  enacted  in  1872,  and  that  section  is  essen- 
tially the  substance  of  the  present  law.  None 
of  these  acts  made  it  an  offense  to  prevent  con- 
ception—  all  of  them  provided  punishment 
for  anyone  disseminating  information  con- 
cerning the  prevention  of  conception.    In  the 


LEGISLATION  191 

federal  statutes,  the  maximum  penalties  were 
fixed  at  a  fine  of  $5,000  or  five  years  imprison- 
ment, or  both.  The  usual  maximum  penalty 
under  a  state  law  is  a  fine  of  $1,000  or  one 
year's  imprisonment,  or  both. 

Comstock  has  passed  out  of  public  notice. 
His  body  has  been  entombed  but  the  evil  that 
he  did  lives  after  him.  His  dead  hand  still 
reaches  forth  to  keep  the  subject  of  preven- 
tion of  conception  where  he  placed  it  —  in  the 
same  legal  category  with  things  unclean  and 
vile.  Forty  years  ago  the  laws  were  changed 
and  the  chief  work  of  Comstock's  life 
accomplished.  Those  laws  still  live,  legal 
monuments  to  ignorance  and  to  oppression. 
Through  those  laws  reaches  the  dead  hand  to 
bring  to  the  operating  table  each  year  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  women  who  undergo  the  agony 
of  abortion.  Each  year  this  hand  reaches  out 
to  compel  the  birth  of  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  infants  who  must  die  before  they  are  twelve 
months  old. 

Like  many  laws  upon  our  statute  books, 
these  are  being  persistently  and  intelligently 
violated.  Few  members  of  the  well-to-do  and 
wealiiiy  classes  think  for  a  single  moment  of 


192  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

obeying  them.  They  limit  their  families  to 
one,  two  or  three  well-cared-for  children. 
Usually  the  prosecutor  who  presents  the  case 
against  a  birth-control  advocate,  trapped  by 
a  detective  hired  by  the  Comstock  Society,  has 
no  children  at  all  or  a  small  family. 
The  family  of  the  judge  who  passes 
upon  the  case  is  likely  to  be  smaller  still.  The 
words  "  It  is  the  law  "  sums  it  all  up  for  these 
officials  when  they  pass  sentence  in  court.  But 
these  words^  so  magical  to  the  official  mind, 
have  no  weight  when  these  same  officials  are 
adjusting  their  own  private  lives.  They  then 
obey  the  higher  laws  of  their  own  beings  — 
they  break  the  obsolete  statutes  for  themselves 
while  enforcing  them  for  others. 

This  is  not  the  situation  with  the  poorer 
people  of  the  United  States,  however.  Mil- 
lions of  them  know  nothing  of  reliable  contra- 
ceptives. When  women  of  the  impoverished 
strata  of  societv  do  not  break  these  laws 
against  contraceptives,  they  violate  those  laws 
of  their  inner  beings  which  tell  them  not  to 
bring  children  into  the  world  to  live  in  want, 
disease  and  general  misery.  They  break  the 
first  law  of  nature,  which  is  that  of  self  preser- 


LEGISLATION  193 

vation.  Bound  hy  false  morals,  enchained  by 
false  conceptions  of  religion,  hindered  by  false 
laws,  they  endure  until  the  pressure  becomes  so 
great  that  morals,  religion  and  laws  alike  fail 
to  restrain  them.  Then  they  for  a  brief  respite 
resort  to  the  surgeon's  instruments. 

For  many  years  the  semi-official  witch  hunt- 
ing of  the  Comstock  organization  had  a  re- 
markable and  a  deadly  effect.  Everyone, 
whether  it  was  novelist,  essayist,  publicist, 
propagandist  or  artist,  who  sought  to  throw 
definite  light  upon  the  forbidden  subject  of  sex, 
or  upon  family  limitation,  was  prosecuted  if 
detected.  Among  the  many  books  suppressed 
were  works  by  physicians  designed  to  warn 
young  men  and  women  away  from  the  pit- 
falls of  venereal  diseases  and  sexual  errors. 
The  darkness  that  surrounded  the  whole  field 
of  sex  was  made  as  complete  as  possible. 

Since  then  the  feeling  of  the  awakened 
w^omen  of  America  has  intensified.  The  rapid- 
ity with  which  women  are  going  into  industry, 
the  increasing  hardship  and  poverty  of  the 
lower  strata  of  society,  the  arousing  of  public 
conscience,  have  all  operated  to  give  force  and 
volume  to  the  demand  for  woman's  right  to 


194.  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

control  her  own  body  that  she  may  work  out 
her  own  salvation. 

Those  who  believe  in  strictly  legal  measures© 
as  well  as  those  who  believe  both  in  legal 
measures  and  in  open  defiance  of  these  brutal 
and  unjust  laws,  are  demanding  amendments 
to  the  obscenity  statutes,  which  shall  remove 
information  concerning  contraceptives  from 
its  present  classification  among  things  filthy 
and  obscene. 

An  amendment  typical  of  those  offered  is 
that  drawn  up  for  the  New  York  statutes 
under  the  direction  of  Samuel  McClure  Lind- 
sey,  of  Columbia  University.  The  words  and 
sentences  in  italics  are  those  which  it  proposed 
to  add: 

(Section  1145.)  Physicians'  instruments 
and  infoi^mation.  An  article  or  instrument 
used  or  applied  by  physicians  lawfully  practic- 
ing, or  by  their  direction  or  prescription,  for 
the  cure  or  prevention  of  disease,  is  not  an  arti- 
cle of  indecent  or  immoral  nature  or  use,  within 
this  article.  The  supplying  of  such  articles  to 
such  physicians  or  by  their  direction  or  pre- 
scription, is  not  an  offense  under  this  article. 
The  giving  by  a  duly  licensed  physician  or  reg* 


LEGISLATION  195 

istered  nurse  lawfully  practicing ^  of  informa" 
tion  or  advice  in  regard  tOj  or  the  supplying  to 
any  person  of  any  article  or  medicine  for  the 
prevention  of,  conception  is  not  a  violation  of 
any  provision  of  this  article/' 

This  proposed  amendment  should  without 
doubt  include  midwives  as  well  as  nurses. 
There  are  thousands  of  women  who  never  see  a 
nurse  or  a  physician.  Under  this  section,  even 
as  it  now  stands,  physicians  have  a  right  to 
prescribe  contraceptives,  but  few  of  them  have 
claimed  that  right  or  have  even  known  that  it 
has  existed.  It  does  exist,  however,  and  was 
specifically  declared  by  the  New  York  State 
Court  of  Appeals,  as  we  shall  see  when  we 
consider  that  court's  opinion  in  the  Sanger 
case,  farther  on  in  the  book.  It  can  do  no  harm 
to  make  the  intent  of  the  law  as  regards 
physicians  plainer,  and  it  would  be  an  im- 
mense step  forward  to  include  nurses  and  mid- 
wives  in  the  section.  With  this  addition  it 
would  remove  one  of  the  most  serious  obstacles 
to  the  freedom  and  advancement  of  American 
womanhood.  Every  woman  interested  in  the 
welfare  of  women  in  general  should  make  it 


196  WOMAN^  AND  THE  NEW  KACE 

her  business  to  agitate  for  such  a  change  in  the 
obscenity  laws. 

The  above  provision  would  take  care  of  the 
case  of  the  woman  who  is  ill,  or  who  is  plainly 
about  to  become  ill,  but  it  does  not  take  care 
of  the  vast  body  of  women  who  have  not  yet 
ruined  their  health  by  childbearing  and  who 
are  not  yet  suffering  from  diseases  compli- 
cated by  pregnancy.  If  this  amendment  had 
been  attached  to  the  laws  in  all  the  states,  there 
would  still  remain  much  to  be  done. 

Shall  we  go  on  indefinitely  driving  the  now 
healthy  mother  of  two  children  into  the  hands 
of  the  abortionist,  where  she  goes  in  prefer- 
ence to  constant  ill  health,  overwork  and  the 
witnessing  of  dying  and  starving  babies?  It 
is  each  woman's  duty  to  herself  and  to  society 
to  hasten  the  repeal  of  all  laws  against  the 
communication  of  birth-control  information 
Now  that  she  has  the  vote,  she  should  use  her 
political  influence  to  strike,  first  of  all,  at  these 
restrictive  statutes.  It  is  not  to  her  credit  that 
a  district  attorney,  arguing  against  a  birth  con- 
trol advocate,  is  able  to  show  that  women  have 
made  no  effort  to  wipe  out  such  laws  in  states 
where  they  have  had  the  ballot  for  years. 


LEGISLATION  197 

It  is  time  that  women  assert  themselves 
upon  this  fundamental  right,  and  the  first  and 
best  use  they  can  make  of  the  ballot  is  in  this 
direction.  These  laws  were  made  by  men  and 
have  been  instruments  of  martyrdom  and  death 
for  unnumbered  thousands  of  women.  Women 
now  have  the  opportunity  to  sweep  them  into 
the  trash  heap.  They  will  do  it  at  once  unless, 
like  men,  they  use  the  ballot  for  those  political 
honors  which  many  years  of  experience  have 
taught  men  to  be  hollow. 

It  is  only  a  question  of  how  long  it  will  take 
women  to  make  up  their  minds  to  this  result. 
The  law  of  woman's  being  is  stronger  than  any 
statute,  and  the  man-made  law  must  sooner  or 
later  give  way  to  it.  Man  has  not  protected 
woman  in  matters  most  vital  to  her  —  but  she 
is  awaking  and  will  sooner  or  later  realize  this 
and  assert  herself.  If  she  acts  in  mass  now, 
it  will  be  another  cheering  evidence  that  she 
is  moving  consciously  toward  her  goal. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

WHY  NOT  BIRTH-CONTROL  CLINICS  IN  AMERICA* 

THE  absurd  cruelty  of  permitting  thou- 
sands of  women  each  year  to  go  through 
abortions  to  prevent  the  aggravation  of 
diseases  for  which  they  are  under  treatment 
assuredly  cannot  be  much  longer  ignored  by 
the  medical  profession.  Responsibility  for  the 
inestimable  damage  done  by  the  practice  of 
permitting  patients  suffering  from  certain  ail- 
ments to  become  pregnant,  because  of  their 
ignorance  of  contraceptives,  when  the  physi- 
cian knows  that  if  pregnancy  goes  to  its  full 
term  it  will  hasten  the  disease  and  lead  to  the 
patient's  death,  must  in  all  fairness  be  laid  at 
his  door. 

What  these  diseases  are  and  what  dangers 
are  involved  in  pregnancy  are  known  to  every 
practitioner  of  standing.  Specialists  have  not 
been  negligent  in  pointing  out  the  situation. 

*  This  chapter,  in  substance,  and  largely  in  language,  appeared 
jndsr  the  present  title  in  the  March,  1920,  issue  of  American  Medicine 
(New  York)  aad  is  incorporated  ia  this  book  by  courtesy  of  that 
publication. 

198 


EIRTH-CONTROL  CLINICS       199 

Eager  to  enhance  or  protect  their  reputations 
in  the  profession,  they  continually  call  out  to 
one  another:  *' Don't  let  the  patient  bear  a 
child  —  don't  let  pregnancy  continue." 

The  warning  has  been  sounded  most  often, 
perhaps,  in  the  cases  of  tubercular  women, 
"  In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  tubercular  pro* 
cess  becomes  exacerbated  either  during  preg- 
nancy or  after  childbirth,  most  authorities 
recommend  that  abortion  be  induced  as  a  mat- 
ter of  routine  in  all  tubercular  women,"  says 
Dr.  J.  Whitridge  Williams,  obstetrician -in- 
chief  to  the  Johns  Hopkins  Hospital,  in  his 
treatise  on  Obstetrics,  Dr.  Thomas  Watts 
Eden,  obstetrician  and  gynecologist  to  Charing 
Cross  Hospital  and  member  of  the  staffs  of 
other  notable  British  hospitals,  extends  but 
does  not  complete  the  list  in  this  paragraph  on 
page  652  of  his  Practical  Obstetrics:  "  Cer- 
tain of  the  conditions  enumerated  form  abso* 
lute  indications  for  the  induction  of  abortion. 
These  are  nephritis,  uncompensated  valvular 
lesions  of  the  heart,  advanced  tuberculosis,  in- 
sanity, irremediable  maligant  tumors,  hydatid!^ 
form  mole,  uncontrollable  uterine  hemorrhage^ 
and  acute  hydramnios." 


200  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

We  know  that  abortion^  when  performed  by 
skilled  hands,  under  right  conditions,  brings 
almost  no  danger  to  the  life  of  the  patient,  and 
we  also  know  that  particular  diseases  can  be 
more  easily  combatted  after  such  an  abortion 
than  during  a  pregnancy  allowed  to  come  to 
full  term.  But  why  not  adopt  the  easier,  safer, 
less  repulsive  course  and  prevent  conception 
altogether?  Why  put  these  thousj,nds  of 
women  who  each  year  undergo  such  abortions 
to  the  pain  they  entail  and  in  whatever  danger 
attends  them? 

AVhy  continue  to  send  home  women  to  whom 
pregnancy  is  a  grave  danger  with  the  futile 
advice:  "Now  don't  get  this  way  again!" 
They  are  sent  back  to  husbands  who  have 
generations  of  passion  and  passion's  claim  to 
outlet.  They  are  sent  back  without  being  given 
information  as  to  how  to  prevent  the  danger- 
ous pregnancy  and  are  expected,  presumably, 
to  depend  for  their  safety  upon  the  husband's 
continence.  The  wife  and  husband  are  thrown 
together  to  bring  about  once  more  the  same 
condition.  Back  comes  the  patient  again  in 
a  few  months  to  be  aborted  and  told  once  more 
not  to  do  it  again. 


BIRTH-CONTROL  CLINICS      201 

Does  any  physician  believe  that  the  picture 
is  overdrawn?  I  have  known  of  many  such 
cases.  A  recent  one  that  came  under  my  ob- 
servation was  that  of  a  woman  who  suffered 
from  a  disease  of  the  kidneys.  Five  times  she 
was  taken  to  a  maternity  hospital  in  an  ambu- 
lance after  falling  in  ofSces  or  in  the  street. 
One  of  the  foremost  gynecologists  of  America 
sent  her  out  three  times  without  giving  her  in- 
formation as  to  the  contraceptive  means  which 
would  have  prevented  a  repetition  of  this 
experience. 

Why  does  this  situation  exist?  We  do  not 
question  the  good  intent  nor  the  high  purposes 
of  these  physicians.  We  know  that  they  ob- 
serve a  high  standard  of  ethics  and  that  they 
are  working  for  the  uplift  of  the  race.  But 
here  is  a  situation  that  is  absurd  —  hideously 
absurd.    What  is  the  matter? 

Several  factors  contribute  to  this  state  of 
affairs.  First,  the  subject  of  contraception 
has  been  kept  in  the  dark,  even  in  medical  col- 
leges and  in  hospitals.  Abortion  has  been 
openly  discussed  as  a  necessity  under  certain 
conditions,  but  the  subject  of  contraception, 
as  any  physician  will  admit,  has  not  yet  been 


202  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

brought  to  the  front.  It  has  escaped  special- 
ized attention  in  the  laboratories  and  the  re- 
search departments.  Thus  there  has  been  no 
professional  stamp  of  approval  by  great  bodies 
of  experimenters.  The  result  is  that  the  aver- 
age physician  has  felt  that  contraceptive 
methods  are  not  yet  established  as  certainties 
and  has,  for  that  reason,  refused  to  direct  their 
use. 

Specialists  are  so  busy  with  their  own  par- 
ticular subjects  and  general  practitioners  are 
so  taken  up  with  their  daily  routine  that  they 
cannot  give  to  the  problem  of  contraception 
the  attention  it  must  have.  Consultation  rooms 
in  charge  of  reputable  physicians  who  have 
specialized  in  contraception,  assisted  by 
registered  nurses  —  in  a  word,  clinics  designed 
for  this  specialty,  would  meet  this  crying  need. 
Such  clinics  should  deal  with  each  woman  in- 
dividually, taking  into  account  her  particular 
disease,  her  temperament,  her  mentality  and 
her  condition,  both  physical  and  economic. 
Their  sole  function  should  be  to  prevent  preg- 
nancy. In  accomplishing  this  purpose,  a 
higher  standard  of  hygiene  is  attained.  Not 
Qnly  would  a  burden  be  removed  from  the 


BIRTH-CONTROL   CLINICS       203 

physician  who  sends  a  woman  to  such  a  clinic, 
but  there  would  be  an  improvement  in  the 
woman's  general  condition  which  would  in  a 
number  of  ways  reflect  itself  in  benefit  to  her 
family. 

All  this  for  the  diseased  woman.  But  every 
argument  that  can  be  made  for  preventive 
medicine  can  be  made  for  birth-control  clinics 
for  the  use  of  the  woman  who  has  not  yet  lost 
her  health.  Sound  and  vigorous  at  the  time 
of  her  marriage,  she  could  remain  so  if  given 
advice  as  to  by  what  means  she  could  space  her 
children  and  limit  their  number.  When  she  is 
not  given  such  information,  she  is  plunged 
blindly  into  married  life  and  a  few  years  is 
likely  to  find  her  with  a  large  family,  herself 
diseased  and  damaged,  an  unfit  breeder  of  the 
unfit,  and  still  ignorant! 

What  are  the  fruits  of  this  woeful  ignorance 
in  which  women  have  been  kept?  First,  a 
tremendous  infant  mortality  —  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  babies  dying  annually  of  diseases 
which  flourish  in  poverty  and  neglect. 

Next,  the  rapid  increase  of  the  feebleminded, 
of  criminal  types  and  of  the  pathetic  victims 
of  toil  in  the  child-labor  factories.     Another 


204  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

result  is  the  familiar  overcrowding  of  tene- 
ments, the  forcing  of  the  children  into  the 
street,  the  ensuing  prostitution,  alcoholism 
and  almost  universal  physical  and  moral  un- 
fitness. 

Those  abhorrent  conditions  point  to  a 
blunder  upon  the  part  of  those  to  whom  we 
have  entrusted  the  care  of  the  health  of  the  in- 
dividual, the  family  and  the  race.  The  medical 
profession,  neglecting  the  principle  involved 
in  preventive  medicine,  has  permitted  these 
conditions  to  come  about.  If  they  were  una- 
voidable, we  should  have  to  bear  with  them, 
but  they  are  not  unavoidable,  as  shown  by 
facts  and  figures  from  other  countries  where 
contraceptive  information  is  available. 

In  Holland,  for  instance,  where  the  infor- 
mation concerning  contraceptives  has  been  ac- 
cessible to  the  people,  through  clinics  and  pam- 
phlets, since  1881,  the  general  death  rate  and 
the  infant  mortality  rate  have  fallen  until  they 
are  the  lowest  in  Europe.  Amsterdam  and 
The  Hague  have  the  lowest  infant  mortality 
rates  of  any  cities  in  the  world. 

It  is  good  to  know  that  the  first  of  the  birth- 
control  chnics  of  Holland  followed  shortly 


BIRTH-CONTROL   CLINICS       205 

after  a  thorough  and  enthusiastic  discussion 
of  the  subject  at  an  international  medical  con- 
gress in  Amsterdam  in  1878.  The  Dutch  Neo- 
Malthusian  League  was  founded  in  1881.  The 
first  birth-control  clinic  in  the  world  was 
opened  in  1885  by  Dr.  Aletta  Jacobs  in  Am- 
sterdam. So  great  were  the  results  obtained 
that  there  has  been  a  remarkable  increase  in 
the  wealth,  stamina,  statui^e  and  longevity  of 
the  people,  as  well  as  a  gradual  increase  in  the 
population. 

These  clinics  must  not  be  confused  with  the 
white  enameled  rooms  which  we  associate  with 
the  term  in  America.  They  are  ordinary 
ofSces  with  the  necessary  equipment,  or  rooms 
in  the  homes  of  the  nurses,  fitted  out  for  the 
work.  They  are  places  for  consultation  and 
examination,  opened  by  specially  trained 
nurses  who  have  been  instructed  by  Dr.  J. 
Rutgers,  of  The  Hague,  secretary  of  the  Neo- 
Malthusian  League,  who  has  devoted  his  life 
to  this  work.  There  have  been  more  than  fifty 
nurses  trained  specially  for  this  work  by  Dr. 
Rutgers.  As  a  nurse  completes  her  course  of 
training,  she  establishes  herself  in  a  community 
and  her  place  of  consultation  is  called  a  clinic. 


206  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

The  general  results  of  this  service  are  best 
judged  by  tables  included  in  the  Annual  Sum" 
mary  of  Marriages,  Births  and  Deaths  in  Eng* 
land,  Wales,  Etc.,  for  1912  * 

In  Amsterdam,  the  birth  rate  dropped  from 
87.1  for  the  period  of  1881-85  to  24.7  for 
1906  and  23.3  in  1912.  During  the  same 
periods,  the  death  rate  fell  from  25.1  to  13.1, 
and  in  1912  to  11.2.  Infant  mortality  for  the 
same  period  fell  from  203  for  each  thousand 
living  births  to  90,  and  in  1912  to  64.  Illegit- 
imate fertility  also  decreased.  Results  in 
other  cities,  as  shown  by  the  table  at  the  end  of 
this  chapter,  are  exactly  similar. 

In  the  Australian  Commonwealth,  where 
birth  control  is  taken  as  a  matter  of  course,  and 
information  concerning  contraceptives  is  avail- 
able to  the  masses,  the  births  were  so  well  dis- 
tributed in  1915  that  while  the  birth  rate  was 
27.3,  there  was  a  general  death  rate  of  only 
10.7.  New  Zealand,  which  is  also  one  of  the 
typical  birth-control  countries,  had  a  birth  rate 
of  25.3  and  a  general  death  rate  of  only  9.1 
for  the  same  year.  These  figures  are  m 
marked  and  happy  contrast  with  those  for  the 
birth  registration  of  the  United  States,  where 

(*See  table  on  page  208.) 


BIRTH-CONTHOL  CLINICS     207 

the  reports  for  1916  show  a  birth  rate  of  24.8, 
but  an  infant  death  rate  of  14.7.  A  similar 
comparison  may  be  made  with  the  German 
Empire  in  1913,  where  there  was  a  birth  rate 
of  27.5  in  1913  and  a  mortality  rate  of  15.  In 
these  countries,  birth-control  information  is  not 
so  generally  within  the  reach  of  the  masses 
and,  consequently,  the  largest  percentage  of 
births  come  to  that  class  least  able  to  bring 
children  to  full  maturity,  as  indicated  in  the 
mortality  rates. 

In  conclusion,  I  am  going  to  make  a  state- 
ment which  may  at  first  seem  exaggerated, 
but  which  is,  nevertheless,  carefully  considered. 
The  effort  toward  racial  progress  that  is  being 
made  to-day  by  the  medical  profession,  by 
social  workers,  by  the  various  charitable  and 
philanthropic  organizations  and  by  state  insti- 
tutions for  the  physically  and  mentally  unfit, 
is  practically  wasted.  All  these  forces  are  in 
a  very  emphatic  sense  marking  tim.e.  They 
will  continue  to  mark  time  until  the  medical 
profession  recognizes  the  fact  that  the  ever  in- 
creasing tide  of  the  unfit  is  overwhelming  all 
that  these  agencies  are  doing  for  society.  They 
will  continue  to  mark  time  until  they  get  at 


208    WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

the  source  of  these  destructive  conditions  and 
apply  a  fundamental  remedy.  That  remedy  is 
birth  control. 


^Amsterdam  [Malthusian  (Birth  Control) 
League  started  1881 ;  Dr.  Aletta  Jacobs  gave 
advice  to  poor  women,  1885] : 

Birth  rate 

Death  rate 

Infantile  Mortalitt: 
Deaths  in  first  year .  . .         203  90  64  per  thousand  living  births 


1881-85 

190&-10 

1912 

37.1 

27.7 

23 . 3  per  1,000  of  population 

25.1 

13.1 

11 .2  per  1,000  of  population 

The  Hague  [now  headquarters  of  the  Neo- 
Malthusian  (Birth  Control)  League]: 

1881-85        1906-10        1912 

Birthrate 38.7  27.5  23. 6  per  1,000  of  population 

Death  rate 23.3  13.2  10.9  per  1,000  of  population 

Intantile  MoRTALrrr: 
Deaths  in  first  year ...        214  99  66  per  thousand  living  births 

These  figures  are  the  lowest  in  the  whole 
list  of  death  rates  and  infantile  mortalities  in 
the  summary  of  births  and  deaths  in  cities  in 
this  report. 

Rotterdam : 

1881-S5        1906-10        1912 

Birthrate 37.4  32.0  29.0  per  1,000  of  population 

Death  rate 24.2  13.4  11. 3  per  1,000  of  population 

InfantiltB  Mortalitt: 
Deaths  in  first  year .  . .         209  105  79  per  thoxisand  living  births 


BIRTH-CONTROL   CLINICS       209 


Fertility  and  Illegitimacy  Rates: 


.liegitimate  fertility. .. . 

1880-2 

306.4 

1880-2 

1890-2 

296.5 

1890-2 

1900-2 

(Legitimate  births  pef 
252.7^   1,000  married  worn- 

[  eu  aged  15  to  45. 
1900-2 

Illegitimate  fertility. . . 

The  Hague 

16.1 

16.3 

f  Illegitimate  births  pet 

11. 3j    1,000  unmarried 

(  -women,  aged  15  to 4& 

Legitimate  fertility .  • . . 
Illegitimate  fertility. . . 

1880-2 

346.5 

13.4 

1890-*? 

303.9 

13.6 

1900-2 
255.0 

7.7 

Rotterdam : 

Legitimate  fertility. .. . 
Illegitimate  .fertility. . . 

18S0-2 

331.4 

17.4 

1890-2 

312.0 

16.5 

1900-a 

299.0 

CHAPTER  XVII 

PROGRESS  WE  HAVE  MADE 

THE  silence  of  the  centuries  has  Keen 
broken.  The  wrongs  of  woman  and  the 
rights  of  woman  have  found  voices.  These 
voices  differ  from  all  others  that  have  been 
raised  in  woman's  behalf.  They  are  not  the 
individual  protests  of  great  feminine  minds, 
nor  the  masculine  remedies  for  masculine  op- 
pression suggested  by  the  stricken  consciences 
of  a  few  men.  Great  voices  are  heard,  both  of 
women  and  of  men,  but  intermingled  with  them 
are  millions  of  voices  demanding  freedom. 

Let  it  be  repeated  that  movements  mothered 
by  emancipated  women  are  often  deceptive  in 
character.  The  demand  for  suffrage,  the 
agitation  against  child  labor,  the  regulation 
of  working  hours  for  women,  the  insistence 
upon  mothers'  pensions  are  palliatives  all. 
Yet  as  woman's  understanding  develops  and 
she  learns  to  think  at  the  urgence  of  her  own 
inner  nature,  rather  than  at  the  dictates  of  men, 

210 


PROGRESS  MADE  211 

she  moves  on  from  these  palliatives  to  funda- 
mental remedies.  So  at  the  crest  of  the  wave 
of  woman's  revolt  comes  the  movement  for 
volimtary  motherhood  —  not  a  separate,  iso- 
lated  movement,  but  the  manifestation  of  a 
cosmic  force  — •  the  force  that  moves  the  wave 
itself. 

The  walls  of  the  cloister  have  fallen  before 
the  cries  of  a  rising  womanhood.  The  barriers 
of  prurient  puritanism  are  being  demolished. 
Free  woman  has  torn  the  veil  of  indecency 
from  the  secrets  of  life  to  reveal  them  in  their 
power  and  their  purity.  Womanhood  yet 
bound  has  beheld  and  understood.  A  public 
whose  thoughts  and  opinions  had  been  gov- 
erned by  men  and  by  women  engulfed  in  the 
old  order  has  been  shocked  awake. 

Sneers  and  jests  at  birth  control  are  giving 
way  to  a  reverent  understanding  of  the  needs 
of  woman.  They  who  to-day  deny  the  right 
of  a  woman  to  control  her  own  body  speak 
with  the  hardihood  of  invincible  ignorance  or 
with  the  folly  of  those  blind  ones  who  in  all 
ages  have  opposed  the  light  of  progress.  Few 
there  are  to  insist  openly  that  woman  remain  a 
passive  instrument  of  reproduction.    The  sub- 


212  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

ject  of  birth  control  is  being  lifted  out  of  the 
mire  into  which  it  was  cast  by  puritanism  and 
given  its  proper  place  among  the  sciences  and 
the  ideals  of  this  generation.  With  this  e&OT% 
has  come  an  illmnination  of  all  other  social 
problems.  Society  is  beginning  to  give  ear  to 
the  promise  of  modern  womanhood:  "  When 
you  have  ceased  to  chain  me,  I  shall  by  the 
virtue  of  a  free  motherhood  remake  the  world.'* 

It  would  be  miraculous  indeed  if  that  victory 
which  has  been  won,  had  been  gained  without 
great  toil,  insufferable  anguish  and  sacrifice 
such  as  all  persons  experience  when  they  dare 
to  brave  the  conventions  of  the  dead  past  or 
blaze  a  trail  for  a  new  order. 

But  where  the  vision  is  clear,  the  faith  deep, 
forces  unseen  rally  to  assist  and  carry  one  over 
barriers  which  would  otherwise  have  been  in- 
surmountable. No  part  of  this  wave  of 
woman's  emancipation  has  won  its  way  without 
such  vision  and  faith. 

This  is  the  one  movement  in  which  pioneer- 
ing was  unnecessary.  The  cry  for  deliverance, 
always  goes  up.  It  is  its  o^vn  pioneer.  The 
facts  have  always  stared  us  in  the  face.  No 
one  who  has  worked  among  women  can  h& 


PROGRESS  MADE  213 

ignorant  of  them,  I  remember  that  ever  since 
I  was  a  child,  the  idea  of  large  families  asso- 
ciated itself  with  poverty  in  my  mind.  As  I 
grew  to  womanhood,  and  found  myself  work- 
ing in  hospitals  and  in  the  homes  of  the  rich 
and  the  poor,  the  association  between  the  two 
ideas  grew  stronger. 

In  every  home  of  the  poor,  women  asked  me 
the  same  question.  As  far  back  as  1900,  I 
began  to  inquire  of  my  associates  among  the 
nurses  what  one  could  tell  these  worried  women 
who  asked  constantly:  "What  can  I  do?" 
It  is  the  voice  of  the  elemental  urge  of  woman 
—  it  has  always  been  there;  and  whether  we 
have  heeded  it  or  neglected  it,  we  have  always 
heard  it.  Out  of  this  cry  came  the  birth  con- 
trol movement. 

Eccnomic  conditions  have  naturally  made 
this  elemental  need  more  plain;  sometimes 
they  have  lent  a  more  desperate  voice  to 
v/oman's  cry  for  freedom.  Men  and  women 
have  arisen  since  Knowlton  and  Robert  Dale 
Owen,  to  advocate  the  use  of  contraceptives, 
but  aside  from  these  two  none  has  come  for- 
ward to  separate  it  from  other  issues  of  sea} 
freedom.     But  the  birth  control  movement  as 


214  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

a  movement  for  woman's  basic  freedom  was 
born  of  that  unceasing  cry  of  the  socially  re^ 
pressed,  spiritually  stifled  woman  who  is  con* 
stantly  demanding:  "  What  can  I  do  to  avoid 
more  children? " 

When  it  came  time  to  arouse  new  public 
interest  in  birth  control  and  organize  a  move- 
ment,  it  was  found  expedient  to  employ  direct 
and  drastic  methods  to  awaken  a  slumbering 
public.  The  Woman  Rebel,  a  monthly  maga- 
zine, was  established  to  proclaim  the  gospel  of 
revolt.  When  its  mission  was  accomplished 
and  the  words  "  birth  control "  were  on  their 
way  to  be  a  symbol  of  woman's  freedom  in  all 
civilized  tongues,  it  went  out  of  existence. 

The  deceptive  "  obscenity  law,"  invoked 
oftener  to  repress  womanliood  and  smother 
scientific  knowledge  than  to  restrain  tl  e  dis- 
tribution of  verbal  and  pictorial  pornography, 
was  deliberately  challenged.  This  course  had 
two  purposes.  It  challenged  the  constitution- 
ality of  the  law  and  thereby  brought  knowl- 
edge of  contraceptives  to  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  women. 

The  first  general,  organized  effort  reached 
in  various  ways  to  all  parts  of  the  United 


PROGRESS  MADE  215 

States.  Particular  attention  was  paid  to  the 
mining  districts  of  West  Virginia  and  Mon- 
tana, the  mill  towns  of  New  England  and  the 
cotton  districts  of  the  Southern  states.  Men 
and  women  from  all  these  districts  welcomed 
the  movement.  They  sent  letters  pledging 
their  loyalty  and  their  active  assistance.  They 
participated  directly  and  indirectly  in  the  pro- 
test which  awakened  the  country. 

As  time  went  on,  the  work  was  extended  to 
various  foreign  elements  of  the  population,  this 
being  made  possible  by  the  enthusiastic  co- 
operation of  workers  who  speak  the  foreign 
languages. 

Leagues  w^ere  formed  to  organize  those  who 
favored  changing  the  laws.  Lectures  were  de- 
livered throughout  the  United  States.  Articles 
were  written  by  eminent  physicians,  scientists, 
reformers  and  revolutionists.  Debates  were 
arranged.  Newspapers  and  magazines  of  all 
kinds,  classes  and  languages  gave  the  subject 
of  birth  control  serious  attention,  taking  one 
side  or  the  other  of  the  discussion  that  was 
aroused.  New  books  on  the  subject  began  to 
appear.  Books  by  foreign  authors  were  re- 
printed and  distributed  in  the  United  States. 


216  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

The  Birth  Control  Keview,  edited  by  volun* 
tary  effort  and  supported  by  a  stock  company 
of  women  who  make  contributions  instead  of 
taking  dividends,  was  founded  and  continues 
its  work. 

After  a  year's  study  in  foreign  countries 
for  the  purpose  of  supplementing  the  knowl* 
edge  gained  in  my  fom'teen  years  as  a  nurse, 
I  came  back  to  the  United  States  determined 
to  open  a  clinic.  I  had  decided  that  there 
could  be  no  better  way  of  demonstrating  to  the 
public  the  necessity  of  birth  control  and  the 
welcome  it  would  receive  than  by  taking  the 
knowledge  of  contraceptive  methods  directly 
to  those  who  most  needed  it. 

A  clinic  was  opened  in  Brookljoi.  There 
480  women  received  information  before  the 
police  closed  the  consulting  rooms  and  arrested 
Ethel  Byrne,  a  registered  nurse,  Fania 
Mindell,  a  translator,  and  myself.  The  pur- 
pose of  this  clinic  was  to  demonstrate  to  the 
public  the  practicability  and  the  necessity  of 
such  institutions.  All  women  who  came  seek- 
ing information  were  workingmen's  wives.  All 
had  children.  No  unmarried  girls  came  at  all. 
Men  came  whose  wives  had  nursing  children 


PROGRESS  MADE  217 

and  could  not  come.  Women  came  from  the 
farther  parts  of  Long  Island,  from  cities  in 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  and  even  more 
distant  places.  Mothers  brought  their  married 
daughters.  Some  whose  ages  were  from  25 
to  35  looked  fifty,  but  the  clinic  gave  them 
new  hope  to  face  the  years  ahead.  These 
women  invariably  expressed  their  love  for  chil* 
dren,  but  voiced  a  common  plea  for  means  to 
avoid  others,  in  order  that  they  might  give 
sufficient  care  to  those  already  born.  They 
wanted  them  "  to  grow  up  decent." 

For  ten  days  the  two  rooms  of  this  clinic 
were  crowded  to  their  utmost.  Then  came  the 
police.  We  were  hauled  off  to  jail  and  event* 
ually  convicted  of  a  "  crime." 

Ethel  Byrne  instituted  a  hunger  strike  for 
eleven  days,  which  attracted  attention  through- 
out the  nation.  It  brought  to  public  notice 
the  fact  that  women  were  ready  to  die  for  the 
principle  of  voluntary  motherhood.  So  strong 
was  the  sentiment  evoked  that  Governor 
Whitman  pardoned  Mrs.  Byrne. 

No  single  act  of  self-sacrifice  in  the  history 
of  the  oirth-control  movement  has  done  more 
to  awaken  the  conscience  of  the  pubhc  or  to 


218  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

arouse  the  courage  of  women,  than  did  Ethel 
Byrne's  deed  of  uncompromising  resentment 
at  the  outrage  of  jailing  women  who  were  at^ 
tempting  to  disseminate  knowledge  which 
would  emancipate  the  motherhood  of  America. 

Courage  like  hers  and  like  that  of  others 
who  have  undergone  arrest  and  imprisonment, 
or  who  night  after  night  and  day  after  day 
have  faced  street  crowds  to  speak  or  to  sell 
literature  —  the  faith  and  the  untiring  labors 
of  still  others  who  have  not  come  into  public 
notice  —  have  given  the  movement  its  daunt- 
less character  and  assure  the  final  victory. 

One  dismal  fact  had  become  clear  long  be- 
fore the  Brownsville  clinic  was  opened.  The 
medical  profession  as  a  whole  had  ignored  the 
tragic  cry  of  womanhood  for  relief  from  forced 
maternity.  The  private  practitioners,  one 
after  another,  shook  their  heads  and  replied: 
"  It  cannot  be  done.  It  is  against  the  law," 
and  the  same  answer  came  from  clinics  and 
public  hospitals. 

The  decision  of  the  New  York  State  Court 
of  Appeals  has  disposed  of  that  objection, 
however,  though  as  yet  few  physicians  have 
cared  to  make  public  the  fact  that  they  take 


PROGRESS  MADE  219 

advantage  of  the  decision.  While  the  decision 
of  the  lower  courts  in  my  own  case  was  up- 
held, partly  because  I  was  a  nurse  and  not  a 
physician^  the  court  incidentally  held  that 
under  the  laws  as  they  now  stand  in  New  York, 
any  physician  has  a  right  to  impart  informa- 
tion concerning  contraceptives  to  women  as  a 
measure  for  curing  or  preventing  disease.  The 
United  States  Supreme  Court  threv/  out  my 
appeal  without  consideration  of  the  merits  of 
the  case.  Therefore,  the  decision  of  the  New 
York  State  Court  of  Appeals  stands.  And 
under  that  decision,  a  physician  has  a  right, 
and  it  is  therefore  his  duty,  to  prescribe  con- 
traceptives in  such  cases,  at  least,  as  those  in- 
volving disease. 

It  is  true  that  Section  1142  of  the  Penal 
Code  of  New  York  State  does  not  except  the 
medical  man,  and  does  not  allow  him  to 
instruct  his  patient  in  birth  control  methods, 
even  though  she  is  suffering  from  tubercu- 
losis, syphilis,  kidney  disorders  or  heart 
disease.  Without  looking  farther,  the  phy- 
sicians had  let  that  section  go  at  its  face  value. 
No  doctor  had  questioned  either  its  purpose 
or  its  legal  scope.    The  medical  profession  was 


220  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

content  to  let  this  apparent  limitation  upon  its 
rights  stands  and  it  remained  for  a  woman  to 
go  to  jail  to  demonstrate  the  fact  that  under 
another  section  of  the  same  code  — 1145— f 
the  physician  had  the  vital  right  just 
described. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  many  physicians  do 
not  even  yet  know  of  their  legal  rights  in  this 
matter. 

But  here  is  what  the  New  York  State  Court 
of  Appeals  said  on  Janury  8,  1918,  in  an 
opinion  thus  far  unquestioned  and  which  is  the 
law  of  the  state: 

"  Secondly,  by  section  1145  of  the  Penal 
Law,  physicians  are  excepted  from  the  provi- 
sions of  this  act  under  circumstances  therein 
mentioned.  This  section  reads:  'An  article 
or  instrument,  used  or  applied  by  physicians* 
lawfully  practicing,  or  by  their  direction  or 
prescription,  for  the  cure  or  prevention  of 
disease,  is  not  an  article  of  indecent  or  immoral 
nature  or  use,  within  this  article.  The  supply« 
ing  of  such  articles  to  such  physicians  or  by 
their  direction  or  prescription,  is  not  an  offense 
under  this  article/ 


PROGRESS  MADE  221 

"  This  exception  in  behalf  of  physicians 
does  not  permit  advertisements  regarding  such 
matters,  nor  promiscuous  advice  to  patients 
irrespective  of  their  condition,  but  it  is  broad 
enough  to  protect  the  physician  who  in  good 
faith  gives  such  help  or  advice  to  a  married 
person  to  cure  or  prevent  disease^  '  Disease,' 
by  Webster's  International  Dictionary,  is  de» 
jQned  to  be,  '  an  alteration  in  the  state  of  the 
body,  or  of  some  of  its  organs,  interrupting  or 
disturbing  the  performance  of  the  vital  func- 
tions, and  causing  or  threatening  pain  and 
sickness;  illness,  disorder.' 

"  The  protection  thus  afforded  the  physician 
would  also  extend  to  the  druggist,  or  vendor, 
acting  upon  the  physician's  prescription  or 
order." 

Section  1142,  which  shamelessly  classes  con- 
traceptive information  with  abortion  and 
things  obscene,  still  stands,  but  under  the  de- 
cision of  the  Court  of  Appeals,  it  is  the  law  of 
New  York  State  that  physicians  have  the  right 
which  they  were  seemingly  denied.  Such  is 
probably  the  fact,  also,  in  many  other  states, 
for  the  so-called  "obscenity"  laws  are 
modelled  more  or  less,  after  the  same  pattern. 


222  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

One  of  the  chief  results  of  the  Brownsville 
clinic  was  that  of  establishing  for  physicians 
a  right  which  they  neglected  to  establish  for 
themselves,  but  which  they  are  bound,  in  the 
very  nature  of  things,  to  exercise  to  an  increas- 
ing degree.  Similar  tests  by  women  in  other 
states  would  doubtless  establish  the  right  else- 
where in  Americao 

We  know  of  some  thirty-five  arrests  of 
women  and  men  who  have  dared  entrenched 
prejudice  and  the  law  to  further  the  cause  of 
birth  control.  The  persistent  work  in  behalf 
of  the  movement,  attended  as  it  was  hy  danger 
of  fines  and  jail  sentences,  seemed  to  puzzle 
the  authorities.  Sometimes  they  dismissed  the 
arrested  persons,  sometimes  they  fined  them, 
somtimes  they  imprisoned  them.  But  the  pro- 
tests went  on,  and  through  these  self-sacrifices, 
word  of  the  movement  went  constantly  to  more 
and  more  people. 

Each  of  these  arrests  brought  added  pub- 
licity. Each  became  a  center  of  local  agita- 
tion. Each  brought  a  part  of  the  public,  at 
least,  face  to  face  with  the  issue  between  the 
women  of  America  and  this  barbarous  law. 

Many    thousands    of    letters    have    been 


PROGRESS  MADE  223 

answered  and  thousands  of  women  have  been 
given  personal  consultations.  Each  letter  and 
each  consultation  means  another  center  of  m« 
fluence  from  which  the  gospel  of  voluntary 
motherhood  spreads. 

Forced  thus  to  the  front,  the  problems  of 
birth  control  and  the  right  of  voluntary 
motherhood  have  been  brought  more  and  more 
to  the  attention  of  medical  students,  nurses, 
midwiv^s,  physicians,  scientists  and  sociolo* 
gists.  A  new  literature,  ranging  all  the  way 
from  discussion  of  the  means  of  preventing 
conception  to  the  social,  political,  ethical,  moral 
and  spiritual  possibilities  of  birth  control,  is 
coming  into  being.  Woman's  cry  for  liberty 
is  infusing  itself  into  the  thoughts  and  the 
consciences  and  the  aspirations  of  the  intel- 
lectual leaders  as  well  as  into  the  idealism  of 
society. 

It  is  but  a  few  years  since  it  was  said  of 
The  Woman  Rebel  that  it  was  "  the  first  un- 
veiled head  raised  in  America."  It  is  but  a 
few  years  since  men  as  well  as  women  trembled 
at  the  temerity  of  a  public  discussion  in  which 
the  subject  of  sex  was  mentioned. 

But,  measured  in  progress,  it  is  a  far  cry 


224  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

from  those  days.  The  public  has  read  of  birth 
control  on  the  first  page  of  its  newspapers.  It 
has  discussed  it  in  meetings  and  in  clubs.  It 
has  been  a  favorite  topic  of  discussion  at  cor* 
rect  teas.  The  scientist  is  giving  it  reverent 
and  profound  attention.  Even  the  minister, 
seeking  to  keep  abreast  of  the  times,  proclaims 
it  from  the  pulpit-  And  everywhere,  serious- 
minded  women  and  men,  those  with  the  vision, 
with  a  comprehension  of  present  and  future 
needs  of  society,  are  working  to  bring  this 
message  to  those  who  have  not  yet  realized  its 
immense  and  regenerating  import. 

The  American  public,  in  a  word,  has  been 
permeated  with  the  message  of  birth  control. 
Its  reaction  to  that  message  has  been  exceed- 
ingly encouraging.  People  by  the  thousands 
have  flocked  to  the  meetings.  Only  the  official 
mind,  serving  ancient  prejudices  under  the 
cloak  of  "  law  and  order,"  has  been  in  oppo- 
sition. 

It  is  plain  that  puritanism  is  in  the  throes 
of  a  lingering  death.  If  anyone  doubts  it,  let 
it  be  remembered  that  the  same  people  who,  a 
few  years  ago,  formed  the  official  opinion  of 
puritanism  have  so  far  forsaken  puritanism  as 


PROGRESS  MADE  225 

to  flood  the  country  with  millions  of  pam- 
phlets discussing  sex  matters  and  venereal 
disease.  This  literature  was  distributed  by  the 
United  States  Government^  by  state  govern- 
ments, by  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  the  Y.  W.  C.  A., 
and  by  similar  organizations.  It  treated  the 
physiology  of  sex  far  more  definitely  than  has 
birth-control  literature.  This  official  educa- 
tional barrage  was  at  once  a  splendid  salute  to 
the  right  of  women  and  men  to  know  their 
own  bodies  and  the  last  heavy  firing  in  the 
main  battle  against  ignorance  in  the  field  of 
sex.  What  remains  now  is  but  to  take  advan- 
tage of  the  victories. 

What  does  it  all  mean?  It  means  that  Amer- 
ican womanhood  is  blasting  its  way  through  the 
debris  of  crumbling  moral  and  religious  sys- 
tems toward  freedom.  It  means  that  the  path 
is  all  but  clear.  It  means  that  woman  has  but 
to  press  on,  more  courageously,  more  confi- 
dently, with  her  face  set  more  firmly  toward 
the  goaL 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE  GOAL 

WHAT  is  the  goal  of  woman's  upward 
struggle?  Is  it  voluntary  mother 
hood?  Is  it  general  freedom?  Or  is  it  the 
birth  of  a  new  race?  For  freedom  is  not  fruit^ 
less,  but  prolific  of  higher  things.  Being  the 
most  sacred  aspect  of  woman's  freedom,  vol* 
untary  motherhood  is  motherhood  in  its  highest 
and  holiest  form.  It  is  motherhood  unchained 
t — mothx^rhood  ready  to  obey  its  own  urge  to 
remake  the  world. 

Volimtary  motherhood  implies  a  new 
morality  —  a  vigorous,  constructive,  liberated 
morality.  That  morality  will,  first  of  all,  pre« 
vent  the  submergence  of  womanhood  into 
motherhood.  It  will  set  its  face  against  the 
conversion  of  women  into  mechanical  mater* 
nity  and  toward  the  creation  of  a  new  race. 

Woman's  role  has  been  that  of  an  incubator 
and  little  more.    She  has  given  birth  to  an  m« 

226 


THE  GOAL  227 

cubated  race.  She  has  given  to  her  children 
what  little  she  was  permitted  to  give,  but  of 
herself,  of  her  personality,  almost  nothing. 
In  the  mass,  she  has  brought  forth  quantity, 
not  quahty.  The  requirement  of  a  male  dom- 
inated civilization  has  been  numbers.  She  has 
met  that  requirement. 

It  is  the  essential  function  of  voluntary 
motherhood  to  choose  its  own  mate,  to  de- 
termine the  time  of  childbearing  and  to  regu- 
late strictly  the  number  of  offspring.  Natural 
affection  upon  her  part,  instead  of  selection 
dictated  by  social  or  economic  advantage,  will 
give  her  a  better  fatherhood  for  her  children. 
The  exercise  of  her  right  to  decide  how  many 
children  she  will  have  and  when  she  shall  have 
them  will  procure  for  her  the  time  necessary 
to  the  development  of  other  faculties  than  that 
of  reproduction.  She  will  give  play  to  her 
tastes,  her  talents  and  her  ambitions.  She  will 
become  a  full-rounded  human  being. 

Thus  and  only  thus  will  woman  be  able  to 
transmit  to  her  offspring  those  qualities  which 
make  for  a  greater  race. 

The  importance  of  developing  these  quali- 
ties in  the  mothers  for  transmission  to  the  chil- 


228  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

dren  is  apparent  when  we  recall  certain  well- 
established  principles  of  biology.  In  all  of  the 
animal  species  below  the  human,  motherhood 
has  a  clearly  discernible  superiority  over 
fatherhood.  It  is  the  first  pulse  of  organic  life. 
Fatherhood  is  the  fertilizing  element.  Its  de- 
velopment, compared  to  that  of  the  mother 
cell,  is  comparatively  new.  Likewise,  its  influ- 
ence upon  the  progeny  is  comparatively  small. 
There  are  weighty  authorities  who  assert  that 
through  the  female  alone  comes  those  modifi- 
cations of  form,  capacity  and  ability  which 
constitute  evolutionary  progress.  It  was  the 
mothers  who  first  developed  cunning  in  chase, 
ingenuity  in  escaping  enemies,  skill  in  obtain- 
ing food,  and  adaptability.  It  was  they  also 
who  attained  unfailing  discretion  in  leadership, 
adaptation  to  environment  and  boldness  in  at- 
tack. When  the  animal  kingdom  as  a  whole 
is  surveyed,  these  stand  out  as  distinctly  fem- 
inine traits.  They  stand  out  also  as  the  charac- 
teristics by  which  the  progress  of  species  is 
measured. 

Why  is  all  this  true  of  the  lower  species  yet 
not  true  of  human  beings?  The  secret  is  re* 
sealed  by  one  significant  fact  —  the  female' jf 


THE  GOAL  229 

functions  in  these  animal  species  are  not  limited 
to  motherhood  alone.  Every  organ  and 
faculty  is  fully  employed  and  perfected. 
Through  the  development  of  the  individual 
mother,  better  and  higher  types  of  animals 
are  produced  and  carried  forward.  In  a  word, 
natural  law  makes  the  female  the  expression 
and  the  conveyor  of  racial  efficiency. 

Birth  control  itself,  often  denounced  as  a 
violation  of  natm*al  law,  is  nothing  more  or  less 
than  the  facilitation  of  the  process  of  weeding 
out  the  unfit,  of  preventing  the  birth  of  defec- 
tives or  of  those  who  will  become  defectives. 
So,  in  compliance  with  nature's  working  plan, 
we  must  permit  womanhood  its  full  develop- 
ment before  we  can  expect  of  it  efficient 
motherhood.  If  we  are  to  make  racial  prog- 
ress, this  development  of  womanhood  must 
precede  motherhood  in  every  individual 
woman.  Then  and  then  only  can  the  mother 
cease  to  be  an  incubator  and  be  a  mother  in- 
deed. Then  only  can  she  transmit  to  her  sons 
and  daughters  the  qualities  which  make  strong 
individuals  and,  collectively,  a  strong  race. 

Volimtary  motherhood  also  implies  the  right 
of  marriage  without  maternity.    Two  utterly 


280  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

different  functions  are  developed  in  the  twa 
relationships.  In  order  to  give  the  mate  rela- 
tionship  its  full  and  free  play,  it  is  necessary 
that  no  woman  should  be  a  mother  against  her 
will.  There  are  other  reasons,  of  course^ — ^ 
reasons  more  frequently  emphasized  —  but 
the  reason  just  mentioned  should  never  be 
overlooked.  It  is  as  important  to  the  race  as 
to  the  woman,  for  through  it  is  developed  that 
high  love  impulse  which,  conveyed  to  the  child, 
attunes  and  perfects  its  being. 

Marriage,  quite  aside  from  parentage,  also 
gives  two  people  invaluable  experience.  When 
parentage  follows  in  its  proper  time,  it  is  a 
better  parentage  because  of  the  mutual  adjust- 
ment and  development  —  because  of  the 
knowledge  thus  gained.  Few  couples  are  fitted 
to  understand  the  sacred  mystery  of  child  life 
until  they  have  solved  some  of  the  problems 
arising  out  of  their  own  love  lives. 

Maternal  love,  which  usually  follows  upon  a 
happy,  satisfying  mate  love,  becomes  a  strong 
and  urgent  craving.  It  then  exists  for  two 
powerful,  creative  functions.  First,  for  its 
own  sake,  and  then  for  the  sake  of  further  en- 
riching the  conjugal  relationship.    It  is  from 


THE  GOAL  231 

sucH  soil  that  the  new  life  should  spring.  It 
is  the  inherent  right  of  the  new  life  to  have  its 
inception  in  such  physical  ground,  in  such 
spiritual  atmosphere.  The  child  thus  born  is 
indeed  a  flower  of  love  and  tremendous  joy. 
It  has  within  it  the  seeds  of  courage  and  of 
power.  This  child  will  have  the  greatest 
strength  to  surmount  hardships,  to  withstand 
tyrannies,  to  set  still  higher  the  mark  of  human 
achievement. 

Shall  we  pause  here  to  speak  again  of  the 
rights  of  womanhood,  in  itself  and  of  itself, 
to  be  absolutely  free?  We  have  talked  of 
this  right  so  much  in  these  pages,  only  to  learn 
that  in  the  end,  a  free  womanhood  turns  of  its 
own  desire  to  a  free  and  happy  motherhood, 
a  motherhood  which  does  not  submerge  the 
woman,  but  which  is  enriched  because  she  is 
imsubmerged.  When  we  voice,  then,  the 
necessity  of  setting  the  feminine  spirit  utterly 
and  absolutely  free,  thought  turns  naturally 
not  to  rights  of  the  woman,  nor  indeed  of  the 
mother,  but  to  the  rights  of  the  child  —  of  all 
children  in  the  world.  For  this  is  the  miracle 
of  free  womanhood,  that  in  its  freedom  it  be- 


232  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

comes  the  race  mother  and  opens  its  heart  in 
fruitful  affection  for  humanity. 

How  narrow,  how  pitifully  puny  has  be- 
come motherhood  in  its  chains!  The  modern 
motherhood  enfolds  one  or  two  adoring  chil- 
dren of  its  own  blood,  and  cherishes,  protects 
and  loves  them.  It  does  not  reach  out  to  all 
children.  When  motherhood  is  a  high  priv- 
ilege, not  a  sordid,  slavish  requirement,  it  will 
encircle  all.  Its  deep,  passionate  intensity  will 
overflow  the  limits  of  blood  relationship.  Its 
beauty  will  shine  upon  all,  for  its  beauty  is  of 
the  soul,  whose  power  of  enfoldment  is  un- 
bounded. 

When  motherhood  becomes  the  fruit  of  a 
deep  yearning,  not  the  result  of  ignorance  or 
accident,  its  children  will  become  the  founda- 
tion of  a  new  race.  There  will  be  no  killing  of 
babies  in  the  womb  by  abortion,  nor  through 
neglect  in  foundling  homes,  nor  will  there  be 
infanticide.  Neither  will  children  die  by 
inches  in  mills  and  factories.  No  man  will 
dare  to  break  a  child's  life  upon  the  wheel  of 
toil. 

Voluntary  motherhood  will  not  be  passive, 
resigned,  or  weak.      Out  of  its  craving  will 


THE  GOAL  233 

come  forth  a  fierceness  of  love  for  its  fruits 
that  will  make  such  men  as  remain  unawakened 
stand  aghast  at  its  fury  when  offended.  The 
tigress  is  less  terrible  in  defense  of  her  off- 
spring than  will  be  the  human  mother.  The 
daughters  of  such  women  will  not  be  given 
over  to  injustice  and  to  prostitution;  the  sons 
will  not  perish  in  industry  nor  upon  the  battle 
field.  Nor  could  they  meet  these  all  too  com- 
mon fates  if  an  undaunted  motherhood  were 
there  to  defend.  Childhood  and  youth  will  be 
too  valuable  in  the  eyes  of  society  to  waste 
them  in  the  murderous  mills  of  blind  greed  and 
hate. 

This  is  the  dawn.  Womanhood  shakes  off 
its  bondage.  It  asserts  its  right  to  be  free.  In 
its  freedom,  its  thoughts  turn  to  the  race.  Like 
begets  Uke.  We  gather  perfect  fruit  from 
perfect  trees.  The  race  is  but  the  amplifica- 
tion of  its  mother  body,  the  multiplication  of 
flesh  habitations  —  beautified  and  perfected 
for  souls  akin  to  the  mother  soul. 

The  relentless  efforts  of  reactionary  author- 
ity to  suppress  the  message  of  birth  control 
and  of  voluntary  motherhood  are  futile.  The 
powers  of  reaction  cannot  now  prevent  the 


234  WOMAN  AND  THE  NEW  RACE 

feminine  spirit  from  breaking  its  bonds.  When 
the  last  fetter  falls  the  evils  that  have  resulted 
from  the  suppression  of  woman's  will  to  free* 
dom  will  pass.  Child  slavery,  prostitu*^ 
tion,  feeblemindedness,  physical  deterioratioOi 
hunger,  oppression  and  war  will  disappear 
from  the  earth. 

In  their  subjection  women  have  not  been 
brave  enough,  strong  enough,  pure  enough  tc 
bring  forth  great  sons  and  daughters.  Abused 
soil  brings  forth  stunted  growths.  An  abused 
motherhood  has  brought  forth  a  low  order  of 
humanity.  Great  beings  come  forth  at  the  call 
of  high  desire.  Fearless  motherhood  goes  out 
in  love  and  passion  for  justice  to  all  mankind. 
It  brings  forth  fruits  after  its  own  kind.  When 
the  womb  becomes  fruitful  through  the  desire 
of  an  aspiring  love,  another  Newton  will  come 
forth  to  unlock  further  the  secrets  of  the 
earth  and  the  stars.  There  will  come  a  Plato 
who  will  be  understood,  a  Socrates  who  will 
drink  no  hemlock,  and  a  Jesus  who  will  not  die 
upon  the  cross.  These  and  the  race  that  is  tc 
be  in  America  await  upon  a  motherhood  that 
is  to  be  sacred  because  it  is  free. 


BOSTON  UNIVERSITY 


1    17n    OlSbi    7 


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