Margaret Sanger gave this speech on the evening before her Woman Rebel trial was to begin. Handwritten corrections probably by Margaret Sanger.
It seems to me that this evening and this gathering are significant and important, not only because the idea of birth control has brought together all of us workers of such diverse outlook and temperament, but especially because of the time chosen for it--the eve of my trial--and because of the dignified and representative intelligence which has supported me in this battle.
FOR I realize keenly that many of those who understand and would support the birth control propaganda if it were carried out in a safe and sane manner, cannot sympathize with nor countenance the methods I have followed in my attempt to arouse the working women to the fact that bringing a child into the world is the greatest responsibility.
They tell me that The Woman Rebel was badly written; that it was crude; that it was emotional, and hysterical; that it mixed issues; that is was defiant, and too radical.
WELL, to all of these indictments I plead guilty! I know that any, and perhaps all of you are better able to cope with the subject than I am. I know that physicians and scientists have a great technical fund of information--greater than I had on the subject of family limitation.
THERE is nothing new, nothing radical in birth control. Aristotle advocated it; Plato advocated it; all our great and modern thinkers have advocated it!
It is an idea that must appeal to any mature intelligence.
But Yet all this scientific and technical discussion has only had the effect of producing more technical and scientific discussion--all very necessary and very stimulating to that very small group of men and women who could understand it.
BUT, all during the long years while this matter was being has been discussed, advocated, refuted, the people themselves--the poor people especially--were blindly, desperately practicing family limitation--just as they are practicing it today.
BUT To them birth control does not mean what it does to us.
TO THEM it has meant the most barbaric methods. It has meant the killing of babies--infanticide,--abortions,--in one crude way or another.
WOMEN, from time immemorial, have tried to avoid unwanted motherhood.
WE ALL KNOW the tribe of professional abortionists which has sprung up and profited by this terrible misfortune.
WE KNOW, TOO, that when the practice of abortion was put under the ban by the church, the an alternate evil--the foundling asylum, with its horrifying history--sprang up.
THERE IS NO NEED to go into the terrible facts concerning the recklessness, the misery, the filth, with which children have been and still are being brought into the world.
I merely want to point out the situation I found when I entered the battle.
ON THE ONE HAND, I found the wise men, the sages, the scientists, discussing birth control among themselves.
But their ideas were sterile. They did not influence nor affect the tremendous facts of life among the working classes and the disinherited!
HOW COULD I APPROACH Bridge THIS CHASM? How could I reach these people? How could I awaken public opinion to this tremendous problem?
I MIGHT HAVE TAKEN up the a policy of safety, sanity and conservatism--but would I have got a hearing?
AND AS I BECAME MORE AND MORE CONSCIOUS of the vital importance of this idea, I felt myself in the position of one who has discovered that a house is on fire; and I found that it was up to me to shout out the warning!
THE TONE OF THE VOICE may have been indelicate and unladylike, and was not at all the tone that many of us would rather hear.
BUT THIS VERY GATHERING--this honor you have thrust upon me--is ample proof that intelligent and constructive thought has been aroused.
SOME OF US may only be fit to dramatize a situation--to focus attention upon obsolete laws, like this one I must face tomorrow morning.
THEN, others, more experienced in constructive organization, can gather together all this sympathy and interest which has been aroused, and direct it.
I THANK YOU for your encouragement and support. AND MY REQUEST TO YOU TONIGHT is that all you social workers--so much better fitted to carry on this work than I--that you consider and organize this interest.
THIS IS THE MOST NEXT IMPORTANT STEP AND ONLY IN THIS WAY CAN I BE VINDICATED!!
Let us put U S. of A upon the map of the civilized world!
Free thinkers of the world have been instrumental in making it so themselves-- Fruits of Philosphy-- blasphemy & obscenity. Besant & Bradlaugh in England-- Ingersoll in U.S.A
Neo Malthusians versus Malthus--
Early marriage & B.C. -- late marriage & continence.
Educate the educators for 35 years. Darwin, Huxley, today Gilbert Murray, Shaw, Wells, Inge, Bishop of B-- Church of England-- officials partly with us -- Roman Catholic-- people with us--33% 32% 31%
What is B.C. Definition
What are we trying to do-- 7 reasons for B.C
Objections-- 1)against the law of God-- Genesis-- "Be fruitful" replenish: "to complete or perfect" quiver? full of them
Nature:
Injurious "Onan" compare camel with airplane
Immoral-- Ignorance & fear after 2000 years (early marriages)
Letters from Mothers
Ingersoll
history
Place, Knowlton, Owen--
Besant & Bradlaugh
and Drysdales-- Dr Rutgers, Dr Jacobs, & Vickery.
9 14 U.S.A. the Woman Rebel-- Federal indictments
Moses Harmon, Oneida Commty, Noyes, Robinson, Jacobs-- Foote.
While all of these valient & fearless champions had influence among their circles--such circles were limited to groups or readers of magazines and did not effect either public opinion or change laws or attract any significant attention.
When in 1914 the first wman's voice arose above the throng to challenge the laws that there was no indication that etc.
No literature at that time in U.S.A.
Federal indictment-- First B.C. League formed--
Brownsville clinic 1916-- E.B. hunger strike. M.S. 30 days
Court of Appeals Sect. 1145.
N.Y. State BCL, Committee of 100 -- Nat BCL.
2) Other in 1916. 3) Leagues organized--arrests.
The war drove public interest before it Lectures in London & Scotland.
B.C.R. 1917 to 1921.>
A.B.C.L. formed & first National Conference held, Town Hall, Mary Winsor Mrs. Rublees arrest-- Trip to Orient London conference--
N.Y. clinic 1922>-- Branches in cities in U.S.A.
Literature-- East, Ross, Pearl, Wiggan magazine--books--press--
Radical profession--drive--Important advance (2000 booklets)
This is the first of a six-part series. Only five articles have been located. For the second article, see "A Better Race Through Birth Control," Nov. 1923; for the third article see "Woman and Birth Control,", Dec. 1923; for the fifth article see "Birth Control in China and Japan,", Feb. 1924 and for the sixth and last, see "The Birth Control Movement in 1923," Apr. 1924.
No great problem affecting the welfare of nations and races has been so misinterpreted and misunderstood, even by men who consider themselves well informed, as that of population and Birth Control. Advocates of Birth Control do not ask merely for assent and approval. They demand investigation and understanding as the initial steps toward support of and adherence to their doctrine.
Much of the opposition to Birth Control has had its source among clergymen and other professional moralists. This ecclesiastic opposition is the more surprising in view of the fact that the only true begetter of the whole Birth Control movement was Robert Malthus, himself a clergyman of the Church of England. He advocated prudential checks which called for the most austere morality. Our clerical opponents also ignore the fact that many of the most noted champions of Birth Control today are clergymen. The most distinguished example is the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, the Very Reverend William Ralph Inge.
The backbone of the Birth Control movement, from the time that Malthus first published his epoch-making An Essay on Population, has been essentially Anglo-Saxon. John Stuart Mill, Francis Place, Matthew Arnold, Thomas Huxley and our own great men-- Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert G. Ingersoll, all spoke openly in favor of the control of population. Today such thinkers and writers as H. G. Wells, Harold Cox (Editor of the Edinburgh Review) Arnold Bennett, Dean Inge, William Archer, Havelock Ellis, Gilbert Murray, Bertrand Russell, John Maynard Keynes (Editor of the The Nation and Athenaeum,> E. W. McBride, and Lord Dawson (the King’s Physician) and innumerable others in Great Britain speak openly and valiantly for Birth Control.
The present movement in this country must not be confused with the Neo-Malthusian movement in Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe. In England the Neo-Malthusian League was the direct outcome of the celebrated trial of Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant, who had openly and in the face of the authorities distributed among the English poor thousands upon thousands of copies of pamphlet by a Boston physician, Dr. Knowlton, entitled “The Fruits of Philosophy”--a pamphlet originally published in 1833 in this country. The Neo-Malthusian League, sponsored by those valiant pioneers, Charles and George Drysdale and Dr. Alice Vickery, soon spread its influence to all parts of the Continent. In Holland its doctrines were openly put into practice, and fifty-three Birth Control clinics, approved by the Dutch Government, have been conducted there with great success for forty years.
The Birth Control movement, which has now absorbed the earlier Neo-Malthusian movement, originated in New York, just a decade ago. While the Neo-Malthusians based their propaganda on Malthus’s theory of Population and earnestly discussed the scientific aspects of the question, the slogan “Birth Control” was put forward in my little paper of advanced feminism, Woman Rebel, and was used as the battle cry of fundamental rights in the fight for the emancipation of the working woman. The response was so immediate and overwhelming that a league was formed--the first Birth Control League in the world.
With the flame-like ardor of pioneers we did not at first realize the full scope of our campaign. At that time I knew nothing of Malthus, nothing of the courageous and desperate battle waged by the Drysdales in England, Rutgers in Holland, G. Hardy and Paul Robin in France, for this century-old doctrine. I was merely thinking of the poor mothers of the East side who had so poignantly begged me for relief, in order that the children they already had brought into the world might have a chance to grow into strong and stalwart Americans. It was almost impossible to believe that the dissemination of knowledge easily available to intelligent and thoughtful parents of the well-to-do classes was actually a criminal act, proscribed not only by State laws but by Federal laws as well.
My paper was suppressed. I was arrested and indicted in the Federal court. But, owing to the vigorous protests of the public and to an appeal sent by a number of distinguished English writers and thinkers, the case against me was finally dismissed.
Meanwhile Birth Control, as the slogan of the movement, not only spread through the American press from coast to coast, but immediately gained currency in Great Britain. Succinctly and with telling brevity these two words sum up our whole philosophy. Birth Control does not mean contraception indiscriminately practised. It means the release and cultivation of the better elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extinction, of defective stocks--those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.
Birth Control aims to introduce into the creation of the next generation of American citizens the sound and scientific principles observed by the gardener and the agriculturist. We must cultivate the human garden by proper spacing, by improving the quality of our precious crop of children by methods of intensive cultivation and not by the production of mere numbers. As long as we wilfully, as a nation, waste the most precious resources we have--our child life-- let us hold our tongues about the dangers of Birth Control. The advocates of Birth Control place a higher value on the life of a child than do its opponents. We want every child born in this country to bring with it the heritage of health and fine vitality. This is the true wealth of our United States.
The first Birth Control clinic in this country was established in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in 1916. It had but a brief existence. It was raided by the police and its founders sentenced to jail as petty miscreants but it is not without significance that, since then, there has been an immense recrudescence of interest in the persistent problem of population, and that a number of new efforts have been made--notably by A. M. Carr-Sanders, to reinterpret the thesis for which so massive a foundation was laid by that obscure clergyman, Thomas Malthus. The whole current of opinion in regard to the question has advanced, not merely in this country and in England, but all over the world. The results of the intelligence tests, the menace of indiscriminate immigration, the fertility of the unfit, and the increasing burden upon the healthful and vigorous members of American society of the delinquent and dependent classes, together with the growing danger of the abnormal fecundity of the feeble-minded, all emphasize the necessity of clear-sightedness and courage in facing the problem, and throw new light on the possibilities of Birth Control as a practical and powerful weapon against national and racial decadence.
We are not, I must repeat, trying to force this doctrine upon the American public. Every day thousands of poor mothers are begging us for help, fully conscious that their sacred duty to the children they have already brought into the world demands that they shall not assume further parental responsibilities which they cannot fulfil. It is in answer to those unfortunate and conscripted mothers that we have banded ourselves together in the American Birth Control League.
(To be continued)Sanger gave this interview on her upcoming obscenity trial at her home at 26 Post Avenue, New York, NY. For the speech she gave the next day, see Hotel Brevoort Speech, Jan. 17, 1916.
Jan. 10, New York
The trial of Mrs. Margaret H. Sanger will begin Tuesday in the federal building before Federal Judge Clayton, where she will be called upon to answer the charges of disseminating literature advocating birth control. Mrs. Sanger has refused to have any counsel, despite the advice of her friends, and is going to plead her own case.
At a dinner Monday at the Hotel Brevoort, at which will be present a number of her friends, Mrs. Sanger expects to explain what her case will be in the trial. At her home at 26 Post avenue Mrs. Sanger gave a history of the case and told what she intends to do.
"I found out," she said, "in my nursing experience so many facts about the overcrowding of children and the condition of the mother and the children that I thought something should be done. Only poor women were having large families, and the rich women who could give their children more comfort were not having children.
"I studied abroad and came back with my mind made up to give to the United States the benefit of my experience. I found that nowhere in this country were there any facts relative to the social problems as applied to large families or population.
"I was astonished at this and it was then that I began to publish the Woman Rebel to call attention to the conditions, and addressed to the working women of America. The publication seemed innocuous to me, but the postal authorities suppressed the first edition and seven editions out of nine were suppressed and confiscated because they discussed the most innocent side of the subject.
"My question was whether working women can afford to keep large families and whether they are willing to hear discussion on the subject. I was not allowed to give the message to the working women. I insisted then and now that a discussion of this was right and fitting and the subject should be brought up.
"If, as charged, my discussion of the subject comes under section 211 of the obscenity law, then that section should be done away with.
"I believe sincerely that the double standard of morals for men and women is due primarily to ignorance of birth control. Men are afraid of having large families; therefore, they do not feel that they can marry young and have children. The result is that they do not marry and the result is much of the immorality of today.
"I expect to conduct my own defense in my trial. I do not intend to make a high flown and oratorical defense, and I do not see why I should go to the big expense of having a lawyer. It will be a simple speech, for to me it is a simple subject, so I will try to take the place of an attorney. I think--I feel sure--that I will be acquitted, and it will be the greatest victory to the freedom of the press since the days of our forefathers."
Mrs. Rose Pastor Stokes, a member of the dinner committee, said to a reporter:
"The question has interested me very much. Every one knows that well to do people are breaking the law regarding birth control all the time, and the legislatures themselves join in that. They cannot understand that everybody does not know how to control and restrict birth. An overwhelming majority of people cannot get the knowledge."
"We see the result in ever increasing numbers of children, most of whom die. By the time the ones who die have been buried, with the consequent expense, nothing is left for the others to live on, and they are starved and miserable. I think that birth control would regulate and end this."
Miss Alice Carpenter, who is also a member of the dinner committee, said:
"I am on the side of Mrs. Sanger because I believe the problem of birth control to be one of the grave social problems of our day. In my own personal experience I have found many poor families who are struggling to give their children a better education than they themselves have had and are handicapped by the fact that there are too many mouths to feed."