Sanger took the oppportunity to visit her brother, Bob Higgins, Hall of Fame Penn State football player and coach.
]]>Sanger spoke at the Schwab Auditorium at Penn State College onNovember 15, 1932, the first in a series of talks sponsored by the Penn State Christian Association. The speech was not found, but quotes were taken from reports in the Daily Collegian (PA). The speech was not found, but quotes were taken fromreports in the Daily Collegian.
Sanger took the oppportunity to visit her brother, Bob Higgins, Hall of Fame Penn State football player and coach.
"Europe's over-population problem is sizzling now; in five or six years something is going to explode!"
Mrs. Margaret Sanger usually convinces the skeptical with her smile, but now a vague shadow of seriousness hovered over it. As she spoke, small, almost unnoticeable gestures betrayed long trying hours on the lecture platform in championing the cause of birth control.
"Already Italy has its eye on several choice pieces of territory. And when its congested mass of humanity is so much in excess that it reaches the brim and overflows, we shall have a war." She paused and then added crisply. "This is as inevitable as was the outbreak in 1914."
"Population must be controlled. Unless it is limited or some system of distribution worked out the nations of the world might just as well throw all their peace treaties to the winds," Mrs. Sanger said. "Peace will never be achieved until this problem is solved; that's why the birth control question has become not only of family importance but of international significance."
"Fortunately, statesmen are beginning to acquire some concept of the importance ofthe over-populated plight of many countries." Mrs. Sanger, who has travelled extensively in foreign countries, is particularly interested in the Italian and Japanese situations. "They must have some outlets for these increasing internal numbers, and they're resorting to invasion to find them," she said.
Mrs. Sanger explained that the de-population could be accomplished by either increasing the death rate of decreasing the birth rate. In the past the death rate has been raised by means of famine, disease, epidemics, and wars; what will happen in the future remains to be seen, she said.
And then her voice softened, she seemed almost shy, so that no one would hardly suspect her of being a crusader, a pioneer.
"After all, no matter how hard we fight, birth control will come. It's just a matter of how soon."
A handwritten note attached to this draft reads: "If this can be cleaned up. It will do for our files."
]]>This is a revised version of Sanger's Jan. 18, 1932 speech ""My Way to Peace." It is not clear if this version was ever delivered or published. Handwritten interlineations were made by Margaret Sanger. At least one page is missing. It is possible this is a draft version of Sanger's speech to the Oklahoma Junior League on Nov. 23, 1933.
A handwritten note attached to this draft reads: "If this can be cleaned up. It will do for our files."
Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen:
In this day of great world upheaval it is natural that there should be drawn up variousplans and proposals as to the means of world peace. My way to world peace is not the way of moratoriums, reparations, or tariffs; it is not the way of Versailles treaties; my way to peace is the way of the people. My way is to direct and control the populationthrough birth control.
There is probably no other subject that has such a practical significance,which at the same time cuts so deeply into the foundations of social evolution and world peace, as birth control. Birth control is a keynote,-–it is asignal of a new moral awakening; a moral responsibility, not only for those children who have already been born; a responsibility not only for those that are about to be born;but for those who have not yet been conceived. It is not only a health and economic expedient; it is a great social measure principle, and that measure principle is interlocked and interwoven with the spiritual progress of therace, and its future.
The definition of birth control is "the conscious control of the birth rate by means that prevent conception of human lives." When you prevent the conception of human life, you do not have to destroy human life. You do not destroy,-–you do not interfere with the development of human life, because there is no life to interfere with or to destroy. It is no more an interference with life to prevent conception than to remain single orto live in celibacy. We say "control." When you control the birth rate you do not have to limit it, any more than when you control your own furnace; you do not put out the fire. You merely adjust its temperature to the requirements of the weather, (you do not have to put the fire out) considering the time of the day and the season. When you control your automobile, you do not necessarily have to stop the engine. And when you control the size of your family, you do not have to limit yourself to one or two children, but you control it the number; first according to the state of the mother’s health affecting the possible inheritance of the child; second, according to the father’s earning power; andthird, according to the standards of living that you wish to maintain. When we say conscious control-–I wonder if any of us can imagine what it is going to mean when the human voice race is conceived consciously, not just as a result of casual accident--the reckless abandon of the moment--but when it is consciously planned fordesired and consciously conceived consciously. I tell you my friends, we don’t know what iscan only glimpse the wonders that will be be before us, when that possibility becomes a reality.
You hear people say, "Why control the birth rate? There is plenty of room in the world and in this country for unlimited population? What we need is a more equal distribution of the necessities of life, a new social system." The control of nature is not the control that we desire today, because there are only two ways of controlling the population in that way; either by increasing deaths, or by decreasing births.
Let us regard this. Population has always been controlled. From the beginning of time,--back as far as we know anything about the human race, there has been control of numbers population by the control methods of Nature. his is not the control we desire today. There are only two ways to control population-–either increase to decrease the birth rate or decrease to increase the death rate, and all through the history of mankind, population has been controlled by the death method increasing the death rate. Nature has been the most ruthless advocate of birth control through by this method. She has accomplished it through famines, pestilences, diseases, floods and wars. Nature thrusts to the wall the old, the weak, the maimed, the mentally deficient, until she perfects her type. Only the fit and strong are able to survive through the way of nature.
This might have been doubtless is an excellent way for Nature to perfect our civilization. But today, whether we like it or not, we no longer allow control of the population through nature’s method of increased death rates. Civilization has progressed beyond that. Now With the development advance of Christianity; with the development organization of Charity and development of Humanitarianism, we have thrust aside the hand of nature, we have interfered with nature’s methods, we will not allow these methods to operate. Civilization takes into the race care of the old, the feeble, the diseased, the insane, the morons the mentally deficient, and makes it almost imperative for them to exist and increase their numbers and multiply. Defectives are now fast breeders. The feeble minded woman is three times as fast fertile as normal mothers woman. This constitutes a real menace to our civilization. There is no doubt that those privileged to carry on the torch of civilization are comparitively lessening in numbers than those who have become [illegible] on the race while at the same time they carry the financial burdens of the unfit.
We find, according to psychological tests made by Professor William Starr-Meyer a few years ago, that only 15,000,000 out of a population of 165,000,000 could be classified as intellectuals and it was found that 85,000,000 had the minds of juveniles under fourteen years of age, 45,000,000 were just average and 15,000,000 were known to be feeble-minded. The great majority of the feeble-minded, the degenerates and the morons do not live in institutions but are mothers living in homes and multiplying rapidly. Is America then, safe for democracy? In this country, the feeble-minded, if they are twenty-one years of age, have the power to vote and their vote is just as good as that of the fifteen percent who are intellectuals. Isn’t it time to do something about this?
We have today what is scientists call a differential birth rate: or in other words a difference in the birth rate of two groups in our population, For the last two generations perhaps, a certain number of people, mainly the fifteen percent intellectuals have been controlling their birthrate-–that is the group with the small families. They have, perhaps, two or three or four children, but in that group, the greatest number of children achieve maturity. Here, consideration is given to the mother’s health, to the child's education and to the possible development of talents of the children.and It is from this group that we find the most children going to high schools the longest. Their children go to colleges, universities and eventually they fill filling the best positions in society.
The other group of large families struggles in poverty and in ignorance. Here we find that poverty and ignorance lack of birth control go hand in hand. We find the mothers broken on the wheel of poverty maternity. Everywhere they ask what they can do to prevent bringing another human being into this world. The fathers become desperate when unemployed, & discouraged. They become over-burdened and morally unfit. It is in this group that we have almost all the great social problems of the day. You have slums, over-crowding, high maternal and infant morality, child labor, illegitimacy, illiteracy. Many in this group are not only unemployed, but unemployable, I found, while working among this group, that it is not their fault that they have more children than they can decently provide for. I found an awakening consciousness on the part of these women to mothers and a desire to have only the number that they could decently take care of, but, because of their poverty, they have found every door closed against them.
Because these are the mothers who have to go to public institutions, hospitals, etc., for medical advice and care, and when they are taken to the hospital to have their babies or to have abortions performed,when they as what they can do not to have any more and they are told that it is against the law to give them this information; or that it is immoral and against the laws of nature. Yet, allthe time, the wives of the professional classes are obtaining information to enable them to limit their families.
What do we do about these evils of society problems? We do not like them; we try to legislate them out of existence. We have been trying for over fifty years to do away with child labor, yet, have we done it? A few years ago, we had several million children under fifteen years working at gainful occupations in the United States. Mainly, These children are taking the place of adults and competing with their fathers and mothers in industry just mainly for a daily existence. Behind them are more and more children forced out of schools and homes, little children who should be getting their education for the sake of in preparation for the future of the race. It is a long story, that of child labor. Go to the beet fields of Colorado or to the cotton fields of the South and you will see the devastating effects of ignorance on these people of birth control & child labor. The child labor committee worked valiantly to try to legislate this evil out of existence, but it cannot succeed until Birth Control Clinics are in operation in these sections; until the mothers of these children have the proper scientific information necessary to control their power of fertility.
One can go through almost all of these our social problems and you can see at a glance how they are interwoven and how they with and pivot around the question of birth control. Let us consider together two more problems connected with the welfare of the race. Take the simple question of maternal mortality. Every physician will tell a mother who has heart disease or kidney disease that she should not go through child-birth again. If she does should become pregnant again, according to the laws medical ethics, it is legal to interrupt this condition to save her life. But instead of then instructing her in the means of contraception, she is sent back to her home with only a statement that the doctors will not be responsible for her life if she should warning not to get into that condition again. She then goes back to her children home in a fearful and nervous condition with a death sentence hanging over her head. and in a weakened state of mind. Can you imagine the effect that this fear creates in a home and what itmeans to the husband and children? Every sick mother should be protected by the best information available.
We move from the mother problem to the infant problem. There we find conditions just as bad; there the mortality is even larger. Approximately 200,000 little children never reach their first birthday; ninety-five percent of them are unwanted and the large majority of them die from causes of due to poverty and neglect. There is not one person here who believes that we can do away with this problem next year or the following year--and yet the state allows these mothers to remain in utter ignorance of how to prevent the coming of 200,000 more lives next year and the next year, who are doomed in advance to die from causes of poverty and neglect.
Our Children’s Bureau tells us that from some of their statistics with that this question of unfit infant mortality has is concerned with three very vital factors. The first is the father’s wage. As it goes up, a larger number of the children survive--if it goes down,a larger number of children die. Second, is the spacing of children in a family. In other words, Where two or three years elapse between the birthdays of children, they have a better chance to survive and develop. The mother has had an opportunity to recuperate and rebuild her health. The family income has been stretched out over the intervening period of years to meet the family needs. We know that the spacing of children determines their chances of survival--that the second child has a better chance to live than the fifth, and the fifth a better chance to live than the twelfth, certainly. We have the astounding statistics that sixty percent of all the twelfth children born in this country are doomed to death before they reach their first birthday. In other words, about six out of every ten children who are twelfth in their family are doomed to die before they breathe their first breath. What a waste of child life! And Waste of mother power! Which Both of these might have been put into the constructive forces in this world of race building instead of making of our women only incubators or child-bearing machines, which is, what women have been throughout the ages become when they are ignorant of birth control.
While We know All of this these statistical facts we know, and we should try to alleviate some of the conditions but our efforts are only palliative. We can correct them only to a certain degree. We give free lunches to children, educational care, do everything possible to keep them alive. You rescue a child to live & bring it through its first years, and then you we have to battle again to carry them it through the succeeding years and then when it becomes fourteen, it secures working papers and starts to compete with his father in industry thereby creating labor problems. Thus all workers become their own rivals in trade the labor market. The law of supply & and demand dominates their existence
How stupid the labor organizations have been to recognize the power of limited numbers in a union, but not to fail to recognize how illogical it is to permit themselves to become their own rivals the same principle in their families.
It seems to me there is no greater cruelty than bringing a child into this world when the parents are diseased or when there is no provision for its care when the parents are diseased. When studying law or when preparing In contemplating to take training the robe of priesthood or entering even law or the least of the professions, you have to one must study carefully to fit yourself oneself for your one's duties. But anyone can become a father or mother. It makes no difference how unprepared or how unfit one might may be-–no difference what one can earn–-one can have as large a any number of children as wanted. Let us consider the children born of diseased parents. If we know we had to pass through other human bodies in order to reach another world, would we not be most particular and careful to choose the kind of parents we should have? We would be more than particular, so why should we not be just as particular about our obligations to the children we expect to bear?
It is not only a personal question; not only a question affecting family welfare but it is also a question affecting world affairs.
In 1924, the United States Government came to the realization that there was a serious population problem in this country. We were not so much concerned about the number of people as about the quality of the population. The United States Government therefore put a ban on immigration. No alien could enter who had certain diseases or was feeble-minded, or illiterate, or who came here for the practice of prostitution. There is a very long list of undesirable aliens who cannot come into qualities which ban aliens from this country. Furthermore, in case If in case some of them who do get in, these undesirable qualities are indicated within five years, these individuals can be deported. This is a good law. We do not want undesirable types to stain the blood stream of the Nation, but, if it is right that undesirables, that they shall not come into the country from without, then why isn’t it equally important that they not increase and multiply from within the country? They propagate the same undesirable qualities that we are trying to keep out of by our immigration laws. These laws of the United States Government caused a great upheaval in Europe and have disturbed the flow and flux of population throughout the whole world. Since we have had a selective quota of population, you can imagine what it has meant to some of those countries that had free entry into our country for so many years. Let us consider two countries that are no longer able to find a place for their surplus population in the United States.
There are two countries that we must call danger spots in the world: Italy and Japan. These two countries have a very acute population problem. Japan is a country mostly mountainous with a population of 67,000,000 of people and with a territorial area not quite as large as California. She cannot possibly feed her population and has never tried to reduce her birth rate and density of population which is very heavy indeed. There are only about 148 square miles and over 400 human beings are crammed into each square mile. It means that Japan, not being able to expand in other countries who would not have her people, had to look for other outlets for her large over-population. South America was willing to take care of part of thissurplus population, but not all the ships that Japan has could take her surplus population to South America. Japan cannot accommodate them all at home and South America can only accommodate a small percentage.
Japan has an inadequacy of the most important natural resources, but and although she has a good water power and a large textile industry which however, is even these are insufficient for that great population for which she must provide. Manchuria had all that China wanted and lacked in raw materials, and at the first opportunity she marched right into Manchuria at the psychological moment when the rest of the world was busy at home with its own problems, and it seems that there she will stay. She has acclaimed proclaimed that "Might is Right", and says: "What are you going to do about it?"; and it is now indeed too late to do much about it.
Now let us look at Italy who has 119 square miles with a population of 41 millions of people, with over 340 people to a square mile. In 1921 the population was 28 millions at the rate of 156 people per square mile, and in 1922 the population was 40 millions at the rate of 548 people per square mile. The birth rate in 1921 was 30.4, and in 1927 it was 26.4. On top of this population which she could not provide for with the world against her immigration, she had 4 to 5 thousand additional human beings being born into her population annually. Over 25% of Italy’s natural increase was coming into this country every year. France received 6 or 7 percent of Italy’s increase, but France has curbed this percentage because of her unemployment problems. Italy is unable to till her own home areas. She has low standards of living and a slight margin of life. Her water power might be developed but at a great expense. She has very little iron ore and other raw materials. If she would should build up her textile industry she would have strong competition in from Japan.
Neither the industrial nor the agricultural possibilities of Italy can provide for her people, yet we know that Italy is increasing; that her dictators call upon her to increase and multiply; and I read that there is now a law in Italy providing that every woman must report to a health station periodically to show cause why she has not had a baby every two years. However, this condition of population today have has not been brought about by dictators alone and although we have only recently become conscious of the importance of birth control and its relation to over-population, with the facts of science and knowledge that we have today, it seems to me that any dictator who insists upon increasing the population by force, such a person should be made to account for it at the world court of human justice.
Other countries are doing their best to adjust their populations. Germany is today doing all possible to keep her birth rate down and avert a re-occurrence of the conditions of 1914. France is now trying to compete with Germany by boosting up her birth rate. France increases her numbers fearing that Germany will come across the border to invade her. It is absurd for France to thus compete with Germany whose proportionate majority is so great that France will not catch up to her even in 10 years. France’s death rate--both infant and maternal--is very high, and she should decrease this death rate instead of trying to increase the present population.
England also had an acute problem of over-population and unemployment, so she decided to send her surplus people to some of her colonies in order to remedy the situation. But it did not work out properly. These people were not happy in the wilds of Australia and Canada because of the different environment and climatic conditions. They did not have the resistance and vigor to withstand the climate. The colonies were therefore obliged to send them back to England saying: "We can’t use your slum population. They can’t stand the rigors of the climate."It all comes back to the "quality" of the human being.
My way of peace is a way of birth control. It can be applied in three ways: First, by continence--not marrying. This however, should not be recommended because it implies the abandonment of the natural marriage relationship which and very often results in the break-up of family life. Second, by sterilization. This method is recommended by physicians only in extreme cases where other forms of contraception are not possible. It is for those who have not the mental equipment or moral character to use means of contraception, and yet who should be given help to prevent their bringing more children into the world. There you have chemical and mechanical methods over which the whole controversy on birth control has been waged.
It is to these methods that the Roman Catholic Church objects. An analysis of the Pope’s recent Encyclical, "On Chaste Wedlock" reveals that they countenance intercourse marital intimacies only for propagation or under certain conditions wherethere can be no possibility of conception.
Now, my way to peace is to apply the same constructive knowledge to this subject that has been applied to industry and to the world of life itself.
This is part of the program that we are trying to bring about now. We hope that a falling birth rate will do its part to avert future wars, and to maintain world, as well as international, peace. We want to make it possible for people to have the best scientific information available. We want the medical profession to take this responsibility and to distribute information in their public and private practice. We want women to be free from the fear of pregnancy. We want children to beconceived and born in love, and to be given heritage of a sound body and a sound mind.
We believe that through Birth Control, untold millions can be relieved of misery andunhappiness. We believe this is the first and most important step we must take if we would bring peace on earth and good will to men and scatter it over the face of the world.
Sanger took the oppportunity to visit her brother, Bob Higgins, Hall of Fame Penn State football player and coach.
]]>Sanger spoke at the Schwab Auditorium at Penn State College on November 15, 1932, the first in a series of talks sponsored by the Penn State Christian Association. The speech was not found, but quotes were taken from reports in the Daily Collegian. The speech was not found, but quotes were taken from reports in the Daily Collegian.
Sanger took the oppportunity to visit her brother, Bob Higgins, Hall of Fame Penn State football player and coach.
"Europe's over-population problem is sizzling now; in five or six years something is going to explode!"
Mrs. Margaret Sanger usually convinces the skeptical with her smile, but now a vague shadow of seriousness hovered over it. As she spoke, small, almost unnoticeable gestures betrayed long trying hours on the lecture platform in championing the cause of birth control.
"Already Italy has its eye on several choice pieces of territory. And when its congested mass of humanity is so much in excess that it reaches the brim and overflows, we shall have a war." She paused and then added crisply. "This is as inevitable as was the outbreak in 1914."
"Population must be controlled. Unless it is limited or some system of distribution worked out the nations of the world might just as well throw all their peace treaties to the winds," Mrs. Sanger said. "Peace will never be achieved until this problem is solved; that's why the birth control question has become not only of family importance but of international significance."
"Fortunately, statesmen are beginning to acquire some concept of the importance of the over-populated plight of many countries." Mrs. Sanger, who has travelled extensively in foreign countries, is particularly interested in the Italian and Japanese situations. "They must have some outlets for these increasing internal numbers, and they're resorting to invasion to find them," she said.
Mrs. Sanger explained that the de-population could be accomplished by either increasing the death rate of decreasing the birth rate. In the past the death rate has been raised by means of famine, disease, epidemics, and wars; what will happen in the future remains to be seen, she said.
And then her voice softened, she seemed almost shy, so that no one would hardly suspect her of being a crusader, a pioneer.
"After all, no matter how hard we fight, birth control will come. It's just a matters of how soon."
For other drafts see Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, LCM 48:256B, and Margaret Sanger Microfilm Edition, Smith College Collections S71:370, 374, 384 and 404.
In the past there have been many and diverse causes of War, but the economic factors and the pressure of population on the resources of the a country are pre-eminently at the root of our modern wars.
Just as It is an acknowledged fact that the big battalions of babies make have made the working man's life a constant battle to keep his productive or labor powers up to the need of his reproductive powers, so has. We also know that the revolution in modern industry has made the necessity for man power of less value than the ox or the dray horse.
The tragic difference is that the reproduction of the ox or dray horse is controlled and its numbers predicated on potential needs. While the man with only his labor power to sell, proceeds to multiply and increase his numbers regardless of his own ability to provide for his offspring or regardless of the social or economic needs of men power the labor that he has to sell.
There are two or three essential and fundamental factors to recognize at the beginning of any plan for National or International Peace.
1. Normal marriage leads to offspring.
2. The normal couple can produce during the child-bearing years from ten to twelve children.
3. Unless death through disease, famines or other misfortune, takes off a large number of these children yearly, no social order known today can provide and maintain the multiplication & increase ofsuch vast numbers in so short a period.
Just as an An acre of land is limited to the number of plants it can occupy, a man's labor power limited to the number of children he can decently provide for.
5. That the The social factors, or returns to the State from slums and over-crowded territories dwindle decrease rather than increase our racial wealth.
Populations have been kept down in the past by keeping the death rate almost equal to the birth rate. The survival rate was very low but it allowed for a healthy, fit population and enabled it to compete in the struggle for existence. Today we have changed all this. We can not allow disease, floods, pestilences and famines to spread over a civilized land. The consequence is that we have greatly lowered our death rate while we have at the same time increased the longevity of adult men and women.
Both of these good factors have been obtained mainly through the lowering of our birth rate. Those Nations who fight against this civilized means of applying science to the control of population, become the danger spots in World Peace.
With these facts in mind, we know that the quality of a population making up a State is an equally important factor in its progress. A population on any given territory must produce its own food or get food from other areas. Not only food but the necessary means of maintenance which today means oil, iron, fuel and natural resources. If a Nation can not maintain its population, it leads the first effort to the only way out - is through emigration.
But when other countries close their gates against migrants, they are then forced to remain at home. They then have one of three problems to face. There are then but three remaining solutions to their problem.
1. Reduce the birth rate.
2. Lower the standards of living.
Expand into other territory by force of Arms and declare War.
Japan has recently given us an excellent example of this the fact of overpopulation. She has a population of approximately 60,000,000 according to the census of 1928. She has about 150,000 square miles of territory. Only one-sixth of this area is cultivable which brings her density of population up to 993 persons a square mile - the highest in the world. She has an enormously high birth rate of 34.8 and a death rate of 19.2 - the second highest natural increase than of any country today in the world. From Besides this she has an increase of 800,000 to 900,000 infants a year.
Japan has not the resources to feed her this growing population. Japan She has not been allowed free access to other lands as other European aliens . The world has closed its doors against her surplus population. Japan has not the natural resources of iron and coal to become a manufacturing or industrial nation which could be exchanged for food. Her silk industry can not provide sufficiently for her needs. Her standards of living were fairly high. Her population is Japan's population is highly intelligent & largely literate, which like Germany in 1914 must have an outlet as well as a return on her [ILLEGIBILE] for educational facilities.
She had three ways to settle the problem.
1. To lower her standards of living and increase her death rate.
2. Decrease the birth rate to a very low figure as quickly as possible to check the increase of numbers.
3. To acquire new territories where she could can have ready access to fuel and mineral resources in order to create industries and provide for the needs of her present and future population.
We know now which of the above Japan chose to do. She had little or no choice in the way out in 1932 after she allowed conditions to drift until 1932. A far seeing Government would have at least attempted to prevent the now inevitable catastrophy by encouraging a check on the birth rate back in 1910 when the U.S.A. Exclusion Act spread to Australia and other countries.
Italy is preparing herself to go the way of Japan. Already she has a population which her she cannot feed from her own soil.
The population in 1927 was 40,548,683, her birth rate 26.4, which had decreased as other countries in Europe had since 1914.
Her death rate of 15.5 had also decreased giving her a natural increase of 10.9 per thousand, far too high for the peace of Europe. She has not over 120,000 square miles of of territory, less than that of Japan proper.
As Italian emigrants are now practically barred from U.S.A. it means that she must provide for the surplus of 90,000(?) Italians who came each year to this country & settled here more or less permanently before the ban.
Italy's problem then is to absorb the 25% natural increase or an additional 500,000 persons into her national economy each year. Her density of population is about 325 per square mile, which is the danger point for any nation in this day of modern industry with the craze for foreign markets. Italy, like Japan, has a choice of ways to meet the situation but unlike Japan she has deliberately set her by the authority of Church & State & refuses to control her birth rate.
To this course of action, her policy of reckless breeding, will bring about an International situation the detriment of which can scarcely now be gauged.
Then may
Their need be no excuses today for any nation overflowing its boundaries. Population increase must & should be controlled, not only as to its births, but as to its distribution.
The death rate is already partially controlled through the Administration of Public Health Agencies. The birth rate must likewise be regarded as fully important consideration & responsibility. If we would lay the foundation for World Peace
We are rejoicing in the incident at Williamstown. Great good will come of it. We mean the clash between Count Antonio Cippico, a typical representative of Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy and our friend Edward M. East of Harvard, on the question of Italy's overpopulation. This duel of ideas took place at the Institute of Politics, an annual gathering of eminent authorities on problems of international importance, a conference conservative, academic, and in the opinion of the New York Herald-Tribune, somewhat theoretical in its speculations. Its deliberations are reported in the daily press; but seldom do they awaken any intense public interest. Now–-all thanks to Professor East–-that is changed. He has transmuted public lethargy into burning interest. He has demonstrated how closely bound up with the great question of international policy are the profoundly personal problems of contraception and Birth Control. Not one of the distinguished authorities gathered last month at Williamstown can return to his desk or post without feeling the influence of Professor East's stimulating and life-giving ideas.
First let us trace the origin of the Williamstown duel. Senator Cippico, who is the spokesman and the astute apologist of the Mussolini policies, bravely and blandly undertook to offer the world a solution for Italy's ever-growing problem of over-population. The world in general, and the United States in particular, were invited by the Count to contribute land, opportunity and prosperity to Italy's swarming, spawning surplus millions. We must open wide our doors to emigrants from Southern Italy–-to all those teeming millions deprived of a foothold in their own country. These immigrants, the Count suggested, are to remain Italians in foreign climes, while Americans, for instance, are advised to move on to make room for these alien hordes. The alternative is more land, more colonies by conquest, for Italy's "explosive expansion." The threat of war, of "expansion" was thinly veiled in Count Cippico's address. Mussolini's government desired to avoid the "cruel necessity of war." In brief, we were invited to take care of the hapless fruits of Italy's reckless and uncontrolled procreative activity.
Professor East answered Count Cippico's extraordinary chauvinist threat--answered it promptly, courageously, forcibly, and his voice has been heard not merely by the two hundred scientists, economists and statesmen gathered at Williamstown, but by the world at large. It is of tremendous educational value. The world, asserted Professor East in effect, asks Italy to set her house in order. Instead of spawning children with reckless rapidity and haphazard irresponsibility, when there is no opportunity for these unfortunates to create a life of usefulness or happiness, Italy should encourage families to restrict their numbers in accordance with opportunity. This, as we all know, is the only safe avenue to national peace, prosperity and the progress of civilization. It is a truth, and a feasible policy of national ethics; applicable not only to overcrowded Italy, but to all enlightened nations. It is the only alternative to war, pestilence and famine-–those inevitable convoys of overpopulation.
There was nothing in Professor East's vigorous, forceful and brilliantly expressed utterance to which any student-–even a freshman--of economics or history might take offense–nothing offensive, nothing shocking, nothing impudent, nothing harsh nor crude nor impractical. It was, as Professor East subsequently suggested in an interview, the counsel of a benevolent family physician who does not want to see a great career ruined by foolhardy indiscretion. But to Count Cippico, a perfect representative of Fascist psychology, this suggestion was one of "cool impudence." Let us here recall that the Fascist mind resents criticism and cannot forgive those who puncture its own delusions of grandeur. In Rome liberal newspapers which criticize the policies of Mussolini's sinister régime are instantly suppressed. Foreign newspaper correspondents who try to cable the impartial truth have been expelled from Italy. Senator Cippico met Professor East's counter-attack in much the same official Fascist manner. He denounced the "infamous theories of Malthus ." He condemned advocates of Birth Control as "apostles of infanticide." His angry, out-of-date utterances suggest that he should have gone to Dayton, Tennessee, instead of Williamstown; for to denounce the Malthusian law of population is no less absurd than to legislate against evolution, and to speak of the "infamous theories of Malthus" is as ridiculous as to condemn the law of gravitation as immoral and materialistic. Any college freshman could inform the illustrious and astute Count and Senator that Rev. Thomas Malthus offered no infamous remedies for overpopulation, and that Birth Control is not infanticide, but the only remedy for the practice of abortion and infanticide. Before undertaking to offer solutions for the problem of Italy's overpopulation, the Fascist would do well to take an elementary course in what was once known as "political economy." Before blaming the misfortunes of his country upon France, England or America, he might profitably investigate the sources of its own national ills.
But instead, like a schoolboy unused to the weapons of mature and impartial thought, discovering in spite of himself that the balloon of his own pet delusions had been suddenly and skillfully punctured, Count Cippico could resort only to angry words, and like a spoiled child had to be appeased and quieted by those who were more interested in diplomatic politeness than in invigorating and thus often stinging truths.
But great good has come of this amusing and educational incident. Professor East's brilliant advocacy of Birth Control as the only sane, enlightened and peaceable avenue to international amity and equilibrium aroused national interest and comment. All of the metropolitan dailies published editorial comment, most of it sane, sober and hospitable to the idea of Birth Control. There were also a number of fine letters, some in the press and others, almost three hundred of them, addressed to Professor East. Notable among the letters is that of Elmer Davis in the New York Times, a splendid exposition of fundamental Malthusian truths concerning overpopulation, truths which no amount of bombastic denunciations can sweep away.
We cannot too enthusiastically express our gratitude to Edward M. East for his splendid, courageous and clear-cut advocacy of Birth Control at the Institute of Politics. His splendid utterance have had the effect of transmuting our notorious American indifference to international problems into a warm and vivid interest. Birth Control, as an implement of enlightened national progress, thanks to his efforts, is making further headway into our national consciousness. Professor East is doing valiant pioneer work in opening new avenues of thought; and we are confident that all the distinguished authorities who listened to him at Williamstown will return to their posts conscious of a new angle of approach to the great complex problems of international relations they are seeking to solve. For the rest of us, let us give assurance to such a statesman and scholar as Edward M. East, that we appreciate his unflinching championship of the truth, which has again been brilliantly dramatized by this incident at Williamstown.
No woman who has the welfare of her children and of society at heart should bear a child within the next five years. Last month we called upon women to adopt this plan in order that the world may have time to catch up with the task of caring for those people already here. Again we urge this step--and urge it with all the emphasis at our command.
We directed attention last month to the first of a series of interviews with Mr. R. C. Martens, an authority upon the world food situation. Mr. Martens informed us that Europe's food supply is on the verge of exhaustion and that there is a world food shortage. That shortage, he declared, will bring about a crash in world affairs that will result in the starvation of millions in Europe. It will also have a dire effect upon America, which effect Mr. Martens is not as yet willing to discuss in detail.
In the interview published in this number, Mr. Martens points out an industrial situation which strikingly emphasizes what he said last month. It also makes exceedingly plain the need of a cessation of births as a reconstruction measure.
The gist of the warning by this authority is just this: the world food supply is short. Millions will starve. Among those who survive, millions will suffer because of the demoralization of industry as it is now conducted. The great crash is inevitable.
Mr. Martens does not stand alone in predictions of this nature. Business men know that trouble is here and that more is coming. Financiers have again and again pointed out similar facts. Students of economics have joined their voices with conservatives and with radical propagandists, crying out that something must be done.
The world has too many people to care for under existing circumstances. Its machinery of production is demoralized. It cannot even produce enough food and distribute it. All things are in a stage of transition, and it will be years before the present state of disorganization disappears.
Moreover, the human wrecks of the Great War are to be cared for. Again, millions of children were born in Europe during the war. Most of them have been undernourished; many of them are otherwise defective, perhaps. Both the cripples of the war and these children are, to a greater or less degree, public burdens for the rest of their lives. There will be added to these the helpless individuals produced by the demoralization of our productive machinery.
In the face of these facts the nations should grapple at once with the population problem. They are not doing so. Instead, some of those madmen whose motto is "After us, the Deluge," are crying for higher birth rates. So the problem of the birth rate comes for solution to those who have always had to solve it--the women, the bearers of children. And what woman, who has thought upon the situation, is willing to bring a child into a disordered world, where lack and misery is likely to be its portion? What woman, through bringing a child to birth, is willing to make the situation worse?
It was suggested by some of our friends that last month's editorial should have called only for a cessation of births among the poor. In these days of upheaval, what condition is stable? The rich of today may be poor tomorrow. The child born in luxury today may, a few years hence, be in no better condition than the one born in poverty now.
The call goes to all women. Men have refused to apply fundamental remedies to the ills of the world. It is for women to right the situation by decreasing the pressure of populations. It is for women to exercise the sacred right of motherhood in refusing to bring a helpless child into a world that has nothing to offer it but the prospect of misery.
The trouble with nearly all writers who oppose birth control is that they consider only proximate instead of ultimate effects. They want large numbers of high quality citizens. Therefore, they contend, let the existing high quality citizens have more children. They assume that families now living in comfortable circumstances will be able to maintain their standards, no matter how many additional children are born. In other words, they expect quality to take care of itself.
We advocates of birth control know that one cannot make quality by insisting on quantity. One cannot make better people simply by having more people.
Mr. Roosevelt says that in order to make a man into a better citizen, we must first have the man. The right environment in which to receive and develop the man is of great importance. Society, as at present constituted, does not provide the means of rearing unrestricted hordes of human beings into intelligent citizenship. Therefore, birth control has become necessary as a check upon the blind working of ignorance and poverty.
When considering the problems of the class known as the "submerged tenth," even the most conservative are willing to admit its need of birth control. But it is an error to suppose that the proportion of families sunk in destitution constitutes only one-tenth of the population. Figures are available to prove that it is closer to three-tenths, or well over one quarter. The census of 1910 shows that 10.7 per cent of married women in the United States went to work outside their homes to help keep their families together. There, without looking farther, is a submerged tenth among the women alone. There is little doubt that the proportion of wage-earning mothers has greatly increased since 1910, and it is equally beyond question that an enormous number of poverty-stricken women are prevented by their excessive family burdens from seeking to earn money outside the home.
They who ban the open and legal dissemination of birth control practically say-- Let the slums spawn if they must; the prime aim is to goad the upper classes into greater fertility. Both effects are deplorable. There is no greater national waste than the spawning of the slums, with its resultant high maternal and infant mortality rates, child labor and prostitution. As for increasing the fertility of the upper classes, it is certain that the majority of such parents even now have as many children as any rational eugenist could ask them to do were he in possession of all the facts of each case--health, income, educational needs and provision for the future, etc. Admitting that they give birth to fewer children, the fact is that they bring to maturity almost as many, relatively, as the poor succeed in doing. The following figures prepared by the French authority, Dr. J. Bertillon, demonstrate this point.
For the whole of France, 86.6 per cent of the children of rich parents reach twenty years of age, and only 48.6 per cent of the children of poor parents. The figures for Paris give a fertility rate of about 100 births per 1,000 poor mothers, and of about 50 per 1,000 rich mothers. Combining these with the former figures, it appears that for each 1,000 rich mothers there would be 43.3 children surviving to twenty years annually, and for each 1,000 poor mothers only 48.6 children. In France, as elsewhere, the poor mother is handicapped in rearing her surviving offspring. This results in a percentage of unfitness, and the contribution of the high birth-rate classes to the adult effective population is, consequently, no higher proportionately than that of the low birth-rate classes.
The world over, the intelligent parents of three children or less have been, and are, the upholders of national standards. This is particularly true of America.
By regarding the bringing of a child into the world as a great social responsibility, the modern American woman shows a fine sense of morality. Since the State does not compel marriage, but leaves it to individual choice, she does not see why motherhood, which is a much more serious problem, should be enforced.
The American woman of today is physically and nervously unable to compete with her grandmother in the matter of bearing unlimited offspring. In Colonial times, the environment was favorable and women specialized on reproduction with eminent success. The prospective mothers of this generation are compelled to divide their creative energies between child bearing and social and economic complexities. It has been estimated that last year seven and a half million women were engaged in industry in the United States, the majority of them in nerve-racking trades. Ten hours a day at a sewing machine or a telephone switchboard are not conducive to either a physical or mental receptiveness to maternity.
It is a very common fallacy that the decadence of Greece and Rome was due to the artificial limitation of offspring. It is surprising to find a historian like Mr. Roosevelt repeating the error. During the periods he refers to, birth control was, indeed, practised, and as a result some of the greatest poets, thinkers and geniuses, generally, of that, or any other age, were developed. Birth Control was one of the few serious moral forces at work tending to preserve the integrity of the State. But, in Rome, at all events, it was not quite effective enough to combat the soft luxury and vice which had come as an aftermath of an orgy of conquest.
The failing birth rate of college graduates, as demonstrated by the statistics gathered in Harvard and Yale by John C. Phillips, should not be considered alarming. The best thing that the modern American college does for the young men or women is to make of them highly sensitized individuals, keenly aware of their responsibility to society. They quickly perceive that they have other duties toward the State than procreation of the kind blindly practised by the immigrant from Europe. They cannot be deluded into thinking quantity superior to quality. But they can be trusted not to suffer extinction. The operation of natural law will prevent the ratio of reproduction from remorselessly falling to zero. In this, as in all other population phenomena, a new level of fertility is being sought- that is all.
In many other isolated groups, the same process can be observed today. The editor of The Journal of Heredity has found that out of 1,512 families of Methodist ministers in America, the average number of children is now only 3.12. The birth rate in the English Society of Friends has fallen from 20 per 1,000 in 1876 to less than 8 per 1,000 in 1915. Or, to take an illustration from an entire racial group, statistics show that the size of Jewish families in Europe has been rapidly decreasing since 1876. They contain now only two to four children, with a growing tendency to restrict the number to two, whilst only twenty years ago they had four to six.
But it is well to emphasize that we advocates of birth control are not so much disturbed by the stationary birth rate of the thinking classes, as by the reckless propagation of the ignorant. We consider that the falling birth rate is a wold-wide movement of civilization.
Mr. Roosevelt quotes approvingly the statement of a French newspaper that the present war was really due to the increasing birth rate of Germany and the falling birth rate of France. Had Germany to face 60,000,000 Frenchmen, instead of 39,000,000, this authority holds, the war would not have taken place. In my opinion, two over-populated nations would have fought even more readily and long before. The war was due to the over-populated nations would have fought even more readily and long before. The war was due to the over-population of Germany and Russia, not to France's stationary population. But once put to the ordeal, the French soldiers, sturdy and highly individualistic because they came from small families, proved at the Battle of the Marne and Verdun the efficacy of birth control, by defeating an enemy mechanically much more formidable than themselves.
On the other hand, the same Germany who had failed against France easily routed the hordes of Russian soldiers, who owed their numbers to an unlimited system of reckless propagation. Germany's birth rate is falling. In 1860 it was 37.9 per thousand inhabitants and in 1912 only 29.1. It is common knowledge that the economists of Europe do not hope for universal peace until the birth rate of Russia also begins to decline.
The intelligent class, with its acceptance of birth control, holds the same position in American society that France does among the nations of the world.
It is an error to suppose that woman avoids motherhood because she is afraid to die. Rather does she fear to live. She fears a life of poverty and drudgery, weighed down by the horror of unwanted pregnancy and tortured by the inability to rear decently the children she has already brought into the world.