During the last ten years race suicide has been one of the leading
problems of life, and on several occasions I have written my views on
this subject. I have not changed my views at all after hearing the many
arguments of the old conservative “stand patters” who try to imitate
Solomon and the other prolific polygamists of long ago. There is no such
a thing as race suicide. When big families are necessary, the big family
will be fashionable. There is an ebb and flow to everything. Just now the
pendulum of progress is swinging out toward the small, healthy, educated
family of two to six children.
In pioneer days in this country, when it was desirable to have many
children born to the new soil, and thus populate the wild country with
people who knew of no other land, and would more likely live contented in
the American wilderness than in the over-populated, lord-laden countries
beyond the seas, the big family was a safeguard against the encroachments
of the Indian and was desirable.
So, too, when Mormonism was a weak doctrine, and grown men would not
accept it as a religion, the pioneers of that faith removed to Utah
and built a city on the parched desert by the inland sea known as Salt
Lake. From here they sent out missionaries to foreign countries, making
converts among the women and families that were prolific in bearing
children. It shows the wisdom of Brigham Young.
He preached to the women that every child born to them added a new star
to their crown of glory. Those who believed the doctrine were anxious to
add to the population of Utah and add a few stars to their future crown.
This is one reason why the unmarried women accepted polygamy. The one
great desire, fired by religious enthusiasm, was to bear children who
would fight for the new doctrine.
It was a matter of wisdom on one side and sheer deception on the other.
It was cheaper to rear Mormon recruits than to secure them full grown.
And the child Mormon would never renounce the faith imbibed at the
mother’s knee.
And thus you will find the situation in all cases where the race was made
to believe that God loved the prolific woman better than the barren maid.
Women will submit to anything, if made to believe it is their religious
duty to do so. But men now realize that there is a psychological problem
connected with the rearing of children, and the question is asked: Is
it the wisest thing to bring into the world many children who cannot
obtain a practical education, and therefore over-populate the nation with
ignorant and dependent creatures? Do we not need quality rather than
quantity?
Is Germany any better off with its prolific families than France with
reduced numbers? Or take your own village or town—who is the best
prepared for the battles of life, the child belonging to a family of
fifteen members, or the child who is one of three or four offsprings?
In my own neighborhood the small families are the best educated or at
least have the best opportunities to educate the children. I know of two
families within a day’s travel of my home that have fifteen children
each. Thirty children in two poor families! And not a single child
obtained a common school education. They were obliged to go out to
service before they were fifteen years old, and many at even a younger
age. They are good citizens for the single reason that they were raised
in the country, where few temptations are found. Had they been born in
the city slums, what could have saved them from a life of crime? As it
is, not a single child will stand any chance to make the world better
for their having lived in it; for they belong to parents who came from
prolific families, and where education was only a luxury to be handed
over to the wealthy.
If Nature intended men and women to be as helpless in the reproduction
of their kind as the fruit tree or the wild animals, the knowledge of
reducing the crop would have been withheld from them. And until men
gained this knowledge Nature was obliged to step in and reduce the
population by famine, disease or earthquake and flood. It was an object
lesson against over-population, and to show men that there was no hurry
about God’s work. If God is love, he certainly does not desire the job of
removing an over-population through the means of some awful calamity or a
visitation of disease.
Don’t you suppose the God of nature loves to see men live in comfort and
plenty? The Meat Trust and the Kaiser want large families, but the Meat
Trust and the Kaiser have motives far removed from bringing happiness
into the world. The one wants children to consume more benzoated meat,
and the other wants to turn children into soldiers and human butchers.
The man who cries for overgrown families of children, to be brought up in
rags and ignorance and slavery, has not the happiness of the race in his
heart. He wants them for a selfish, barbarous purpose—for profit and for
plunder.