For draft version, see Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, LCM 131:60A.
]]>Sanger gave this introduction at a birth control meeting held at Carnegie Hall in New York City. See her opening remarks and her introductions for James F. Cooper, Dorothy Bocker and Charles Francis Potter.
For draft version, see Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm, Library of Congress, LCM 131:60A.
I believe know that all of you must agree with me in my belief that such calm, dispassionate research as Dr. Bocker's work statement reveals will do much to awaken not only the interest and respect of the people of the community but to awaken and stimulate the interest of other scientists and physicians in the medical aspects of birth control.
Now I think that this is the most appropriate moment to announce a further victory for the American Birth Control League. I consider it a distinct victory to be able to announce to you tonight that the 6th International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference is to be held here in New York next March. This follows on the highly successful conferences held in Paris in 1901, in Liege in 1905,, the Hague in 1910, in Dresden, 1911 and London 1922.
For the first time in its history the foremost authorities on the problems of population are coming from every civilized country of the world as our guests. All of you who have shown your interest in this subject by coming here tonight may take advantage of this great educational opportunity to see and hear our eminent speakers in the various sessions.
We have already invited a large number of men preeminent in their chosen fields--men like John Maynard Keynes, the economist, Sir Ray Lankester, the great English scientist; Lord Buckmaster, probably the finest legal mind in Great Britain; Professor MacBride the well known biologist of London University; Edward Westermarck, renowned as a profound student of the institution of marriage; men like H. G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett. There are already acceptances of delegates from Hungary, Austria, Germany, France from the Orient, India and Japan.
The sessions during these five days will be a sort of temporary university on all the deep problems of civilization--opening new vistas into the whole future of the human race. Nothing so wide in its scope has ever happened in this country before.
But I am taking time from our next speaker who is going to tell you something of the legal status of birth control. He will also tell you something more of this conference and how we can all cooperate to make it a great success in the eyes of the world. It gives me real pleasure to introduce to you Mr. I. N. Thurman.
For other versions see Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm: Smith College Collections, S71:274 and Margaret Sanger Papers Microfilm,cLibrary of Congress, LCM 131:0489 LCM:493.
On September 1, 1930, an earnest group of experts--men and women--from various parts of the civilized world gathered quietly together in Zurich, Switzerland.
These men and women were delegates to the Seventh International Birth Control Conference. They came together in the interest of the scientific quest for contraceptive knowledge.
For five days, more than one hundred scientists, physicians and clinicians discussed the technical problems of contraception. They compared notes, reported progress made in research laboratories and birth control clinics, and proved beyond doubt that the much troubled subject now universally known as Birth Control had entered a new phase of development.
All theories, all propaganda, all moral and ethical aspects of the subject were left in abeyance--practically forgotten--in the unanimity of cool, scientific conviction that today contraception as an instrument in racial progress is on the way to be reliable and efficient and may in the very future be perfected.
As the first international conference of its kind ever organized in the history of humanity, the Zurich Conference represents a milestone in the history of modern civilization. For this reason, I believe that it is highly desirable that the record of this conference be preserved in the present pages.
Civilization is being remade, not in parliaments, not in the conferences of international financiers on the Quai d’Orsay, but by obscure scientists in laboratories, by earnest workers in clinics, by the silent victories of modest physicians in preventive therapy. Just as the great spectacular achievements in aviation--the trans-atlantic and round-the-world flight--would never be possible without the vastly increased perfection of design which insures reliability and efficiency, so today contraception as an instrument of individual and racial well-being would not be possible without the efforts of these scientists, the bio-chemists and the clinicians through the agency of whose laboratories new methods, new materials, new processes can be effectively developed and proven.
A milestone and landmark this Conference must remain, because it has lifted the whole problem out of the troubled atmosphere of theory where previously it had been battered by the winds of doctrine and the brutal attacks of prejudice into the current of serene, impersonal, scientific abstraction. That such a gathering, widely international in character, coolly yet compassionately humanitarian in temperament, could become a reality in my own time, instead of a wish hoped for yet hardly to be attained, indicated to one soldier at least in the long battle that a new orientation in race welfare had indeed arrived.
For many years past I had been acutely cognizant of the fact--to me distressing and seeming insurmountable--that many of our most able physicians were absolutely lacking in knowledge of the technique of contraception. Even those who were familiar enough with the methods available recognized that the percentage of efficiency and safety were widely fluctuating. Such was the condition of affairs in the United States which impelled me to call together the men and women actually working on the problem in the various scattered clinics of Europe and Asia.
It was a sad commentary on the progress of medical science, with its recent emphasis on preventive therapy, that while it is roughly estimated that the number of abortions performed annually in this country amounts to no less than one million, the methods of contraception had not been advanced since the days of Mensinga. The medical attitude toward contraception has only recently changed. Its indifference may have been, to a large extent, influenced by the early crusaders for birth control, which until my own advent in the field hid under the name of Neo-Malthusianism. For almost a century they had been fighting in the fields of economic and social doctrine. Implicitly they had assumed that the known methods of contraception were already one-hundred per cent effective, and required only to be disseminated by the written or spoken word.
That this was a fallacy was soon discovered in the controversy of technique and methods by modern students of clinical contraception. But the first necessity was to ascertain what methods were being advised; how the method was applied; what percentage of success or failure attended the various methods. This was demonstrated in the experience with the diaphragm pessary as used in the clinics by Dr. Norman Haire and Dr. Hannah Stone--two different phases of technique by two competent students of gynecology through the means of the same pessary. This and other differences will be noticed as brought out in the papers as well as in the discussion.
It is of interest to note from the Proceedings of the Conference that greater advance in scientific contraception has been made in America and England than in continental countries (not excepting Holland and France where the practice of birth control has long been a part of family life). This is the result of directing the movement along professional lines, where emphasis has been placed on the keeping of records as well as on a greater consideration of contraception, keeping it separate and apart from sex hygiene and abortion.
Just as demand and supply are related to all economic questions, so is propaganda a related part of scientific research in the realms of sex psychology. The medical profession will ultimately meet the issue on the demands of public opinion.
The next and most important step in the progress of the movement is to perfect a method of contraception giving a greater security and confidence to those workers in the field.
In the early days Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant had been tried in London for circulating Dr. Charles Knowlton’s "Fruits of Philosophy",” a pamphlet written by the Boston physician about half a century previous and detailing in the sketchiest fashion crude methods upon which it would today be folly to rely.
The following year--1878--Edward Truelove, a London publisher, was sentenced for selling a similar book, Robert Dale Owen’s “Moral Physiology,” which was far more innocuous, from the point of view of contraception, than its advocates supposed. From the first publication of The Malthusian, which began its work in 1879 with the sub-title of "A Crusade against Poverty,” the advocates of birth control at the time unconsciously assumed that methods of contraception were already reliable, effective, and practically perfected. Statistics were unavailable; clinics which might have kept records, were either forbidden by law or unheard of; and the medical profession, as a whole, remained antagonistic or at best indifferent to this vast and complicated problem of human life.
However, it would be unjust to minimize the progress made by the courageous physicians and pioneers of the movement. Dr. Stille, a physician of Hanover, as well as Max Hausmeister and Karl Lotter, who in 1889 founded the Sozial Harmonische Verein in Stuttgart, devoted themselves mainly to theoretical and economic aspects of the small family system. We may read of the enormous decline of the birth rate in certain German towns at the period; but it is impossible to definitely correlate in a precise scientific manner the two phenomena. In France, the birth rate had indeed been declining since 1831, and more sharply since 1871, although the late Paul Robin had not founded his Ligue de la régéneration humaine until 1896.
In 1900 the first International Neo-Malthusian Conference was held in Paris--in the office of M. Robin’s League. Delegates from four countries--England, France, Germany and Holland--took part in what for those days was considered a thorough discussion of technical methods of contraception. Dr. J. Rutgers of Holland in particular, we are informed, presented a discussion of such methods, both historical and contemporaneous. This, it seems, was the second international conference on methods, the first having taken place at an International Medical Congress in 1879 in Amsterdam.
Paul Robin had proposed the formation of an international federation of Neo-Malthusian leagues, and Dr. C. R. Drysdale was elected president of this organization. A second international conference was called in Liége, Belgium, in 1905. Records of this meeting indicate the swing of interest away from technical aspects of contraception to the problems of propaganda and popularization. At the Liége meeting the Neo-Malthusians came into sharp conflict with the Marxians, who were the advocates of larger and larger families as the surest method to precipitate social revolution. This clash of ideas had the effect of propelling public interest away from the technical and hygienic aspects of contraception to the social aspects of population pressure.
Subsequent international conferences followed: in the Hague (July, 1910); participation in the International Congress of Hygiene in Dresden (1911) in which representatives of thirteen countries participated. Two German women pioneers, Dr. Helene Stöcker and Frau Marie Stritt, acted as organizers. It was not until 1922 that the Fifth International Conference was held. In 1914 I had initiated the so-called Birth Control movement in the United States, and this movement, with its emphasis on the personal and racial aspects of contraception, had in less than ten years become a world movement. In 1922 in London, not only Europe, but the Americas, Japan, China and India were represented by delegates. In 1925 the Sixth Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference was held in New York City, and delegates from sixteen countries attended.
Since 1914, in ever increasing numbers we had gradually succeeded in effecting the adherence of economists, sociologists, biologists and geneticists, the effect of which was to convert the intelligent laymen to the principle of birth control. In this field indeed, the battle seemed to be won. Because public opinion supported birth control, it was possible, despite the still strenuous opposition, to open and maintain contraceptive clinics--except in such countries as France and Italy, engulfed in waves of post-war reaction.
More and more it became apparent to me that a new direction was necessary. The theories, the ramifications, the racial aspects of birth control had been thoroughly threshed out. It was but a matter of time that these fundamental ideas should percolate to the masses--the masses indeed were already crying aloud for "safe and harmless" methods. But since the opening of the century, Medicine itself has evolved from its dogmatic stage. Prevention indeed was the cry--the prevention of epidemics, the prevention of disease, the conquest of the great scourges like tuberculosis or syphilis, instead of their alleviation. Medicine indeed was fast becoming, as a penetrating observer recently expressed it, the most personal of our sciences, and was advancing from the art of curing to the art of prevention. Science was effecting a veritable revolution in sanitation and general health education. The practical step then to take is to apply scientific knowledge to improve conditions of life.
From the beginning, I had insisted upon the establishment of birth control clinics as the swiftest, most effective, and most scientific method of advancing the cause of contraception.
Yet all of this work going on in various countries, under the most diverse conditions, must be correlated, coordinated, unified into a common human ideal. For this reason, after organizing the first World Population conference, assembled in Geneva in 1927, I began work on the problem of bringing the scientists, the research workers, and the directors of clinics together. The success achieved is recorded in the accompanying pages.
Not without significance, to me, was the quiet earnestness of this unheralded gathering. The press did not intrude upon the deliberation of the men and women assembled in the charming little town in the Alps. No publicity was sought. The most important as well as the most delicate of all human relationships was discussed without shame and without prejudice, and problems most deeply affecting the well-being of every individual man and woman, the health of all future generations, and the stability of nations, were brought closer to satisfactory and permanent solution.
Here indeed, the impartial observer might have discovered the true spirit of internationalism, the fundamental brotherhood of man, rather than in the bickerings and disagreements of the League of Nations at Geneva, or the truce in the warfare of governmental finances.
For these reasons, the record of the Zurich Conference demand permanent place in the annals of human progress.
New York, U.S.A.
New York City, September, 1925
The Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, convened at the Hotel McAlpin, New York, from March 25 to March 31, 1925, marked the culmination of a quarter of century's progress in the idea of contraception. In its Correlation of the researches and investigations of scientists, scholars and specialists, this gathering of students of the population and biological problems of the human race has, it is our firm conviction, triumphantly vindicated the efforts of all pioneers of Malthusian science who for more than a century have staunchly advocated individual and racial salvation through the instrument of procreative discipline.
In undertaking the publication of the various papers contributed to the conference, it is our hope that this fecund re-orientation of thought and social endeavour may be studied by all serious students of contemporary social problems. The present volumes, moreover, constitute in our opinion a permanent contribution to social science and an invaluable record of the twentieth century's restatement and re-application of inexorable Malthusian laws.
Fully to appreciate the unprecedented development in the last twenty-five years of the doctrine of Birth Control in all its complex ramifications, readers of the present record must know something of the five previous international conferences. An outline of these gatherings demonstrates that the doctrine of scientific contraception is no mere faddish panacea thrust forward as a cure all of the troubles of humanity, but that it is deeply rooted in the enlightened social consciousness, and developed logically and steadily into a world movement. I shall attempt in this preface briefly to indicate the progress of the conferences and suggest sources of information to those interested in a more detailed study of the movement.
The First International Neo-Malthusian Conference was convened in Paris in August, 1900, by the late Paul Robin, a courageous and indefatigable pioneer in France of the idea of conscious procreation. The first meeting was held in the offices of the Ligue de la régéneration humaine. Four leagues then in existence dedicated to Neo-Malthusian propaganda participated. These leagues were the Malthusian League of Great Britain, founded in 1877 following the widespread interest aroused by the Bradlaugh-Besant trial; that of Holland, founded in 1879; and those of France and Germany. Upon the proposal of M. Robin that "a free and friendly federation of all existing leagues and any future leagues be established," the international organization was born, of humble, honest and serious parents. It is of interest that M. G. Hardy, a son-in-law of M. Robin, represented France at the sixth conference.
Five years later, in September 1905, the Second International was called together in Liege by Dr. Mascaux, president of the newly-formed Belgian league. The attendance at the second gathering indicated a steady and increasing growth of interest in the Neo-Malthusian idea. The large number of letters from advocates unable to be present in person was evidence of its spread in many countries not represented by official delegates. At the opening public meeting the insoluble conflict between Marxians and Malthusians was saliently dramatized. A deputy of Liege had been accorded the privilege of acting as chairman, and took advantage of the opportunity to explain to the auditors that "he was a disciple of Marx and in favor of a rapid increase of the people in order to put a stop to the unfair division of property now existing, by means of a social revolution". At the end of the meeting, this chairman with ill-concealed anger "washed his hands of the whole affair." But the listeners, a well-behaved gathering of citizens and delegates vociferously expressed its adherence to the doctrines of Malthus as opposed to those of Karl Marx.
The Third International Conference was convened five years later, in July 1910, in the Hague, Holland. It was held under the presidency of Dr. Alice Drydale Vickery -- her husband Dr. C. R. Drysdale having died in 1907. The honorary president was Dr. Juris Van Houten, former Minister of the Interior for the Netherlands. The organization and direction of the third conference was skillfully and effectually carried through by the late Dr. J. Rutgers, to whose efforts and the renowned success of Neo-Malthusian education in Holland was attained. Representatives attended not only from Great Britain, Holland, France, Germany and Belgium, but also from Sweden, Spain, Hungary and Switzerland, and reports were sent from Italy and Portugal. Provocative and stimulating papers were contributed by Doctors Aletta Jacobs, Helene Stoecker and C. W. Saleeby, while Professor Knut Wicksell, the eminent Swedish economist and August Forel, the Swiss psychologist, expressed enthusiastic adherences in their papers. A large number of charts conclusively establishing the correlation between death rates and birth rates in the majority of European countries were presented by Dr. C. V. Drysdale, a son of the English pioneers, and who has in 1925 honored us by presiding over the sixth conference. It is an interesting fact to note in passing that while America was not represented, the late Dr. E. B. Foote of New York contributed generously in defraying the expenses of the gathering.
This success and sincerity of this third international conference resulted in an invitation to the Malthusians, from the Administration of the International Hygiene Exhibition, suggesting an international conference in connection with the exhibition in Dresden in September, 1911. The invitation was accepted. No less than thirteen countries were represented at this brilliant gathering, the success of organizing which was due to no small extent to the indefatigable efforts and energy of Dr. Helene Stoecker of Berlin and Frau Marie Stritt of Dresden. Two Americans attended; and to Drs. William J. Robinson and T. Belfield belongs the honor of first representing the United States in Neo-Malthusian international conferences. The fourth gathering closed with the passage of the following resolution: " The Fourth International Neo-Malthusian Conference in Dresden desires to call the attention of all governments to the evil results arising from the great pressure of population in all civilized countries as regards poverty, unemployment, over-crowding and race deterioration, and hopes they will give the most earnest attention to the matter with a view to reducing the birth rate especially among the poorer and less stable classes."
It is not necessary to recount here the catastrophes encountered by the Occidental world between the time of the passage of this resolution in September, 1912 and the calling of the fifth conference in London, in July 1922. As we all know, it was a decade of disaster, socially, nationally and racially. Suffice to note here merely that almost at the very moment of the inauguration of the World War, and quite independently of any Neo-Malthusian background or theory, the campaign for Birth Control was commenced, and despite the distracting hysteria of wartime, progressed by leaps and bounds. Advanced on purely individual, feministic and profoundly eugenic bases, emphasizing the desiderata of Quality as opposed to Quantity in the procreation of humans, serenely indifferent to historical backgrounds, academic discussions and polemics, the new battle for human emancipation focused attention upon the problem of hygienic contraception as a personal problem, and essentially as the problem of womankind.
The Neo-Malthusians were among the very first to recognize the significance of the militant methods of the American Birth Control advocates, who aimed by "four steps to our goal--agitation, education, organization and legislation, "to effect the liberation of mothers and children. It was therefore inevitable that the older Malthusian forces should join hand with the battlers for Birth Control. This union of fighting forces was more or less permanently cemented at the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control ConferenceThe report of the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference (London: William Heineman, 1922) may be obtained through the American Birth Control League, Inc.
held in London, from July 11 to 14, 1922. At this conference the Orient, including Japan and India, were represented, as well as practically every civilized country of the Occident. The generous adherence and participation of such distinguished representatives of the newer school of economic thought like John Maynard Keynes indicated that Neo-Malthusian thought had survived the attacks of its opponents. No less significant was the fact that hygienic methods of contraception were urged not merely on grounds of economic and social expediency, but as logically and morally necessary from the medical, psychological and biological points of view. Of special interest, as President Drysdale has pointed out, was the resolution proposed at the contraceptive session, which was attended by 164 members of the medical profession (few of whom had any previous connection with the movement). This resolution passed with only three dissentients and indicated the changed attitude concerning contraception which is gradually sweeping over the medical profession.Such, in brief, is the background of international conferences and the alignment of forces which contributed to the success of the first international conference devoted to Birth Control and Neo-Malthusianism ever held in America. A glance at the complete program, reprinted as an index to the present volume, should suggest that varied and colorful nature of the various sessions of this conference, which attracted folk from all walks of life, and interested the public at large no less than specialists and social workers. All of its sessions were given generous space in the daily press and stimulated editorial expression, for the most part of amazing tolerance and fairness. No less than sixteen important countries were represented, and the attendance at some of the sessions was approximately 1,000 persons.
The task of editing the large number of papers submitted to the Sixth International Conference involves problems of selection and economy. Not only economy of space, but economy of the reader's attention. Naturally, every paper presented aroused discussion and comment, often of highly stimulating and provocative nature. Highly desirable as a record of such discussion is, as well as that provoked by the various resolutions submitted, it is so uneven a value, often so prolix in perusal, that we have determined that the stenotyped record of these discussions is not of equal value with the papers and must therefore be sacrificed.
It has seemed feasible to group the papers submitted into a number of general groups and to publish these groups in separate volumes. The first volume contains the general international reports, messages from distinguished and enlightened minds of the various countries, and indicates the awakened consciousness in support of voluntary disciplined parenthood as opposed to the procreation by chance and accident of the children of the next generation.
In subsequent volumes of the proceedings, the fundamental economic and statistical aspects, in relation to overpopulation, war and poverty, will be treated in a special volume (Vol. II). The eugenic racial and public health aspect, will follow; in other sections the sex, psychological, hygienic and medical papers will be correlated; and in still another group the ethical and religious contributions to the conference will be gathered together.
The American Birth Control League announces four steps to our desired goal--agitation, education, organization and legislation. The reports from foreign countries, which make up so large a proportion of the present volume, indicate the uncrystallized and, in certain countries, unorganized nature of the interest in Birth Control. In some reports the interest would seem purely academic; in others purely agitational. We have deemed it of documentary importance to include all of these reports, thus permitting the reader or student, by co-ordination, to derive his own conclusions concerning the status quo.
We present the papers contributed to the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference in the hope not only that they represent the results of a quarter century's active interest and endeavour in behalf of conscious procreation, but in the deeper hope that they may increase and intensify interest in this challenge to contemporary civilisation, and may stimulate the younger generation of scientists and thinkers to deeper study and beneficent discoveries.
It is impossible here to express full thanks to all those who by the preparation of papers and the courage of their expression helped to make the conference a success. The present task of presenting to a larger public the papers has been undertaken with the generous co-operation of our President, C. V. Drysdale, D. Sc., A. B. E., F. R. S. E., President of the New Generation Leagueof London, Mary Sumner Boyd, managing editor of the Birth Control Review, Mr. R. A. Parker, Mr. Marc Epstein of the Marstin Press, and others. It has not in every case been possible to submit proofs to distant contributors in far-away countries, but wherever possible the authors have read proofs of their contributions. The reader is asked forgiveness for the unavoidable errata he may discover in so varied a work.