Produced by Eric Eldred and Distributed Proofeaders.
WOMAN AND THE NEW RACE
BY
MARGARET SANGER
With A Preface By Havelock Ellis
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New York 1920
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DEDICATED TO
THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, A MOTHER
WHO GAVE BIRTH TO ELEVEN LIVING CHILDREN
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PREFACE
The modern Woman Movement, like the modern Labour Movement, may be
said to have begun in the Eighteenth century. The Labour movement
arose out of the Industrial Revolution with its resultant tendency to
over-population, to unrestricted competition, to social misery and
disorder. The Woman movement appeared as an at first neglected
by-product of the French Revolution with its impulses of general
human expansion, of freedom and of equality.
Since then, as we know, these two movements have each had a great and
vigorous career which is still far from completed. On the whole they
have moved independently along separate lines, and have at times
seemed indeed almost hostile to each other. That has ceased to be the
case. Of recent years it has been seen not only that these two
movements are not hostile, but that they may work together
harmoniously for similar ends.
One final step remained to be taken--it had to be realised not only
that the Labour movement could give the secret of success to the woman
movement by its method and organization, but that on the other hand,
woman held the secret without which labour is impotent to reach its
ends. Woman, by virtue of motherhood is the regulator of the
birthrate, the sacred disposer of human production. It is in the
deliberate restraint and measurement of human production that the
fundamental problems of the family, the nation, the whole brotherhood
of mankind find their solution. The health and longevity of the
individual, the economic welfare of the workers, the general level of
culture of the community, the possibility of abolishing from the world
the desolating scourge of war--all these like great human needs,
depend, primarily and fundamentally, on the wise limitation of the
human output. It does not certainly make them inevitable, but it
renders them possible of accomplishment; without it they have been
clearly and repeatedly proved to be impossible.
These facts have long been known to the few who view the world
realistically. But it is not the few who rule the world. It is the
masses--the ignorant, emotional, volatile, superstitious masses--who
rule the world. It is they who choose the few supreme persons who
manage or mismanage the world's affairs. Even the most stupid of us
must be able to see how it is done now, for during recent years the
whole process has been displayed before us on the very largest scale.
The lesson has not been altogether in vain. It is furnishing a new
stimulus to those who are working for the increase of knowledge, and
of practical action based on knowledge, among the masses, the masses
who alone possess the power to change the force of the world for good
or for evil, and by growth in wisdom to raise the human race on to a
higher level.
That is why the little book by Margaret Sanger, whose right to speak
with authority on these matters we all recognize, cannot be too widely
read. To the few who think, though they may here and there differ on
points of detail, it is all as familiar as A. B. C. But to the
millions who rule the world it is not familiar, and still less to the
handful of superior persons whom the masses elect to supreme
positions. Therefore, let this book be read; let it be read by every
man and woman who can read. And the sooner it is not only read but
acted on, the better for the world.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I WOMAN'S ERROR AND HER DEBT
II WOMAN'S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM
III THE MATERIAL OF THE NEW RACE
IV TWO CLASSES OF WOMEN
V THE WICKEDNESS OP CREATING LARGE FAMILIES
VI CRIES OF DESPAIR
VII WHEN SHOULD A WOMAN AVOID HAVING CHILDREN?
VIII BIRTH CONTROL--A PARENTS' PROBLEM OR WOMAN'S?
IX CONTINENCE--IS IT PRACTICABLE OR DESIRABLE?
X CONTRACEPTIVES OR ABORTION?
XI ARE PREVENTIVE MEANS CERTAIN?
XII WILL BIRTH CONTROL HELP THE CAUSE OF LABOR?
XIII BATTALIONS OF UNWANTED BABIES THE CAUSE OF WAR
XIV WOMAN AND THE NEW MORALITY
XV LEGISLATING WOMAN'S MORALS
XVI WHY NOT BIRTH CONTROL CLINICS IN AMERICA?
XVII PROGRESS WE HAVE MADE
XVIII THE GOAL
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WOMAN AND THE NEW RACE
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CHAPTER I
WOMAN'S ERROR AND HER DEBT
The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt
of woman against sex servitude. The most important force in the
remaking of the world is a free motherhood. Beside this force, the
elaborate international programmes of modern statesmen are weak and
superficial. Diplomats may formulate leagues of nations and nations
may pledge their utmost strength to maintain them, statesmen may dream
of reconstructing the world out of alliances, hegemonies and spheres
of influence, but woman, continuing to produce explosive populations,
will convert these pledges into the proverbial scraps of paper; or she
may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a
voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world
is thus remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and
revolutionist.
Only in recent years has woman's position as the gentler and weaker
half of the human family been emphatically and generally questioned.
Men assumed that this was woman's place; woman herself accepted it. It
seldom occurred to anyone to ask whether she would go on occupying it
forever.
Upon the mere surface of woman's organized protests there were no
indications that she was desirous of achieving a fundamental change in
her position. She claimed the right of suffrage and legislative
regulation of her working hours, and asked that her property rights be
equal to those of the man. None of these demands, however, affected
directly the most vital factors of her existence. Whether she won her
point or failed to win it, she remained a dominated weakling in a
society controlled by men.
Woman's acceptance of her inferior status was the more real because it
was unconscious. She had chained herself to her place in society and
the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only
chains thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal
for the masculine civilizations of the world. In accepting her rôle as
the "weaker and gentler half," she accepted that function. In turn,
the acceptance of that function fixed the more firmly her rank as an
inferior.
Caught in this "vicious circle," woman has, through her reproductive
ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth. Whether
it was the tyranny of a monarchy, an oligarchy or a republic, the one
indispensable factor of its existence was, as it is now, hordes of
human beings--human beings so plentiful as to be cheap, and so cheap
that ignorance was their natural lot. Upon the rock of an
unenlightened, submissive maternity have these been founded; upon the
product of such a maternity have they flourished.
No despot ever flung forth his legions to die in foreign conquest, no
privilege-ruled nation ever erupted across its borders, to lock in
death embrace with another, but behind them loomed the driving power
of a population too large for its boundaries and its natural
resources.
No period of low wages or of idleness with their want among the
workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no child-labor factory, ever came
into being, save from the same source. Nor have famine and plague been
as much "acts of God" as acts of too prolific mothers. They, also, as
all students know, have their basic causes in over-population.
The creators of over-population are the women, who, while wringing
their hands over each fresh horror, submit anew to their task of
producing the multitudes who will bring about the _next_ tragedy of
civilization.
While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing
the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly
creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with
other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes,
furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had
she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste
and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.
Woman's passivity under the burden of her disastrous task was almost
altogether that of ignorant resignation. She knew virtually nothing
about her reproductive nature and less about the consequences of her
excessive child-bearing. It is true that, obeying the inner urge of
their natures, _some_ women revolted. They went even to the extreme of
infanticide and abortion. Usually their revolts were not general
enough. They fought as individuals, not as a mass. In the mass they
sank back into blind and hopeless subjection. They went on breeding
with staggering rapidity those numberless, undesired children who
become the clogs and the destroyers of civilizations.
To-day, however, woman is rising in fundamental revolt. Even her
efforts at mere reform are, as we shall see later, steps in that
direction. Underneath each of them is the feminine urge to complete
freedom. Millions of women are asserting their right to voluntary
motherhood. They are determined to decide for themselves whether they
shall become mothers, under what conditions and when. This is the
fundamental revolt referred to. It is for woman the key to the temple
of liberty.
Even as birth control is the means by which woman attains basic
freedom, so it is the means by which she must and will uproot the evil
she has wrought through her submission. As she has unconsciously and
ignorantly brought about social disaster, so must and will she
consciously and intelligently _undo_ that disaster and create a new
and a better order.
The task is hers. It cannot be avoided by excuses, nor can it be
delegated. It is not enough for woman to point to the self-evident
domination of man. Nor does it avail to plead the guilt of rulers and
the exploiters of labor. It makes no difference that she does not
formulate industrial systems nor that she is an instinctive believer
in social justice. In her submission lies her error and her guilt. By
her failure to withhold the multitudes of children who have made
inevitable the most flagrant of our social evils, she incurred a debt
to society. Regardless of her own wrongs, regardless of her lack of
opportunity and regardless of all other considerations, _she_ must pay
that debt.
She must not think to pay this debt in any superficial way. She cannot
pay it with palliatives--with child-labor laws, prohibition,
regulation of prostitution and agitation against war. Political
nostrums and social panaceas are but incidentally and superficially
useful. They do not touch the source of the social disease.
War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while
woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her
reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.
Two chief obstacles hinder the discharge of this tremendous
obligation. The first and the lesser is the legal barrier. Dark-Age
laws would still deny to her the knowledge of her reproductive nature.
Such knowledge is indispensable to intelligent motherhood and she must
achieve it, despite absurd statutes and equally absurd moral canons.
The second and more serious barrier is her own ignorance of the extent
and effect of her submission. Until she knows the evil her subjection
has wrought to herself, to her progeny and to the world at large, she
cannot wipe out that evil.
To get rid of these obstacles is to invite attack from the forces of
reaction which are so strongly entrenched in our present-day society.
It means warfare in every phase of her life. Nevertheless, at whatever
cost, she must emerge from her ignorance and assume her
responsibility.
She can do this only when she has awakened to a knowledge of herself
and of the consequences of her ignorance. The first step is birth
control. Through birth control she will attain to voluntary
motherhood. Having attained this, the basic freedom of her sex, she
will cease to enslave herself and the mass of humanity. Then, through
the understanding of the intuitive forward urge within her, she will
not stop at patching up the world; she will remake it.