Editorial Comment

EDITORIAL COMMENT

Judge John Stelk, of the Court of Domestic Relations, Chicago, has issued a report of his work in which he proves himself to be a genuine humanitarian and an exceptionally enlightened jurist. He advocates birth control, handles without gloves the war baby problem and scores the hypocrisy and ienfficiency of organized charity. The poor, overburdened mother has the right, he affirms, to "guard against another mouth to feed.". The same knowledge that is "given out every day to her sisters in the higher walks of life" should be extended to her. "I don't hesitate to say," he declares, "that it is a thing of sheer brutality to compel a physically debilitated wife to further burden herself and society with defective offspring, aside from the almost criminal shortcomings, with attendant misery, visited upon the latter. I am of the opinion that some day the entire question will be considered by the Federal Government." So far as we know, he drew his conclusions directly from the problems he was called upon to solve in the Court of Domestic Relations. We regard it as only a matter of time before all thinking persons with the interests of society at heart will hold similar views. But it is gratifying to find a judge in the vanguard of progress, usually men of his calling are among the last to fall in line. We shall have more to say about Mr. Stelk, of Chicago, in a subsequent issue.

Word Has Come that Dr. Ben Reitman has lost his appeal in the higher courts of Ohio. He was first tried about a year ago and convicted of giving out birth control leaflets. His sentence, now affirmed, was six months in the workhouse and a fine of $1,000. Cleveland newspapers state that he began to serve this outrageous jail term on March 18. It is to be regretted that no mention was made of his case in the report of the Cleveland league printed elsewhere in this issue. Dr. Reitman does not appear to have received the full local support to which any idealist battling in this cause was surely entitled.

Official France is crying for more children to fill the places of those who have been slain. But the people, militarized and stricken economically, are unable properly to care for all those who come into the world as it is. Let two incidents recorded in recent Paris newspapers demonstrate the point. Louis Maffert, one of the editors of the patriotic La Victoire, writes as follows. "We are certainly too fond of formulas. When we discover a phrase which is applicable to a problem, we repeat it with unwearied zeal. We say sanctiomoniously to every woman 'Have children!' and the day before yesterday two poor girl-mothers arrived at my office, at nine o'clock in the evening, with two new-born infants. They were without food, without money, without shoes and without lodging. The hotels never seem to have rooms for unfortunates of their kind. We did our best for them and finally turned them over to the Saint Sulpice home. But, all the same, such things ought not to happen." Again, the Socialist newspaper, l'Humanite, tells how a father, mother and four young children, unable to meet their obligations, were dispossessed in mid-winter not by a flinty-hearted bourgeois landlord, but by a munitions concern controlled by the Ministry of War, on whose property their poor lodging was located. Had the parents practised birth control, the repopulation of France would have suffered, but they probably would have been financially able to cope with their ironical tragedy.

WWe wish that we had available space in this magazine to record every case of wife murder and infanticide occurring as a result of unrestricted childbearing. Every month sees scores of such tragedies in the United States, only a small proportion of which are considered sufficiently sensational to be played up in the newspapers. Of the thousands that take place in other countries we, of course, hear nothing. We have before us accounts of two incidents which illustrate the extremes of the problem. The birth of a seventh child ina poverty-stricken Italian home in New York City rendered the father temporarily insane. He stamped up and down the room where his wife was lying in bed, muttering in his despair, then drew a knife and stabbed the baby. The mother threw herself across the little body and received a mortal wound. Horrified the man fled. In a New Jersey suburb of Greater New York, a middle-aged mother with a boy of sixteen and a girl of eleven gave birth to a third girl. This was an eventuality which she had plainly not figured upon. She brooded until her mind was affected. With a small quantity of chloroform bought at the drug store, she ended her baby's life. When placed under arrest, she stated that she had felt herself "unable to raise the child properly," that her everyday domestic work had become too formidable for her to cope with. Can any one doubt that this was a case of unwanted pregnancy? By every dictate of reason, knowledge of how to prevent conception should have been available for her, no less than for the murdered Italian mother with her seven babies produced in blindness and ignorance and probably in all too rapid succession to each other.

We call attention to the prospects on another page of The New York Woman's Publishing Company, Inc. This new organization is composed of fifteen women, who propose to leave no stone unturned to put The Birth Control Review on a financial basis. Application for papers of incorporation has been made, and $10,000 worth of stock will be offered to the public at $10 a share.

When this magazine resumed publication last December, we printed an appeal for help and told our subscribers that the continued existence of the only organ of the birth control movement in America depended upon their co-operation. The response was almost nil, but we have struggled along through the winter at a financial loss. The little group that has borne the burden cannot do so indefinitely. If YOU want your magazine to live, buy at least one share and urge your friends to do likewise. It is a case of now or never.