The Case For Birth Control
A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts
PREPARED BY
MARGARET H. SANGER
To Aid the Court in its Consideration of the Statute designed to prevent
the dissemination of information for Preventing Conception
PUBLISHED, MAY 1917
[Illustration]
JONAH J. GOLDSTEIN
COUNSEL
Copyright by
MARGARET H. SANGER
1917
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY 4
Introductions to Birth Control by Margaret H. Sanger,
Havelock Ellis, August Forel and G. F. Lydston.
CHAPTER II. THE ORIGIN AND PRACTICE OF BIRTH CONTROL IN VARIOUS 23
COUNTRIES
Genesis of Movement,
England,
Holland,
France,
United States,
Other Countries.
CHAPTER III. POPULATION AND BIRTH RATE 43
Birth Control, by Havelock Ellis,
Population Facts in United States,
Birth Rate of British Empire,
Birth Rate of Other Countries (With Tables).
CHAPTER IV. INFANT MORTALITY 93
General Statistics,
Results of Children’s Bureau Survey at Johnstown, Pa., by Emma
Duke,
Manchester Report.
CHAPTER V. MATERNAL MORTALITY AND DISEASES AFFECTED BY PREGNANCY 155
Children’s Bureau Report, by Grace L. Meigs,
Death Rates from Child Birth in Foreign Countries,
A Municipal Birth Control Clinic,
Tuberculosis,
Kidney Diseases,
Eclampsia,
Diabetes,
Pelvic Deformities,
Heart Disease,
Too Frequent Pregnancies,
Pernicious Vomiting.
CHAPTER VI. HARMFUL METHODS PRACTICED TO AVOID LARGE FAMILIES 185
Coitus Interruptus,
Continence,
The Objects of Marriage, by Havelock Ellis,
Abortion.
CHAPTER VII. PROSTITUTION, FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS AND VENEREAL DISEASES 197
The Social Evil,
Feeble-mindedness,
Syphilis,
Gonorrhea.
CHAPTER VIII. OTHER TRANSMISSIBLE DISEASES AND PAUPERISM 223
Insanity,
Epilepsy,
Alcoholism,
Pauperism,
Child Labor.
CHAPTER IX. CONCLUSION: EMINENT OPINIONS 245
The Progress of Holland,
Eminent Opinions
GLOSSARY 250
FOREWORD
The purpose of the Appellant in presenting the various statistics and
medical and social facts incorporated in the supplementary brief,
entitled THE CASE FOR BIRTH CONTROL, is to give the Court a clear
conception of the meaning of birth control. The historical stages
through which this question has gone have been reviewed, its status in
foreign countries outlined. Finally, the effects upon the commonwealth
of the prohibition contained in the Section known as 1142 of the Penal
Law have been made clear. Said Section comprises in its prohibition the
very points of knowledge most necessary to human liberty, and has
resulted in extreme harm to the individual, to the family and to society
at large.
The idea of the social and racial value of knowledge to prevent
conception is new in the United States, and therefore it has been
difficult to get first-hand facts and comprehensive statistics with a
local bearing. Consequently, the Appellant has been obliged to lay
emphasis upon data from foreign countries where the subject has been
exhaustively studied, both theoretically and practically. However, the
American case for birth control, as presented in this compilation, is
the most complete possible in view of the records available.
MARGARET H. SANGER
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
_The material in this general introduction to the question of the
prevention of conception comprises an article by Margaret H. Sanger and
extracts from the works of Havelock Ellis, August Forel and G. F.
Lydston, M.D. The last three are eminent authorities, whose opinions are
selected as being the clearest exposition of the social philosophy—Birth
Control._
NOTE: All the notations of pages and tables refer to original
documents and not to the present volume.
CHAPTER I
_THE CASE FOR BIRTH CONTROL_
BY MARGARET H. SANGER
(_The following is the case for birth control, as I found it during my
fourteen years’ experience as a trained nurse in New York City and
vicinity. It appeared as a special article in “Physical Culture,” April,
1917, and has been delivered by me as a lecture throughout the United
States. It is a brief summary of facts and conditions, as they exist in
this country._)
For centuries woman has gone forth with man to till the fields, to feed
and clothe the nations. She has sacrificed her life to populate the
earth. She has overdone her labors. She now steps forth and demands that
women shall cease producing in ignorance. To do this she must have
knowledge to control birth. This is the first immediate step she must
take toward the goal of her freedom.
Those who are opposed to this are simply those who do not know. Any one
who like myself has worked among the people and found on one hand an
ever-increasing population with its ever-increasing misery, poverty and
ignorance, and on the other hand a stationary or decreasing population
with its increasing wealth and higher standards of living, greater
freedom, joy and happiness, cannot doubt that birth control is the
livest issue of the day and one on which depends the future welfare of
the race.
Before I attempt to refute the arguments against birth control, I should
like to tell you something of the conditions I met with as a trained
nurse and of the experience that convinced me of its necessity and led
me to jeopardize my liberty in order to place this information in the
hands of the women who need it.
My first clear impression of life was that large families and poverty
went hand in hand. I was born and brought up in a glass factory town in
the western part of New York State. I was one of eleven children—so I
had some personal experience of the struggles and hardships a large
family endures.
When I was seventeen years old my mother died from overwork and the
strain of too frequent child bearing. I was left to care for the younger
children and share the burdens of all. When I was old enough I entered a
hospital to take up the profession of nursing.
In the hospital I found that seventy-five per cent. of the diseases of
men and women are the result of ignorance of their sex functions. I
found that every department of life was open to investigation and
discussion except that shaded valley of sex. The explorer, scientist,
inventor, may go forth in their various fields for investigation and
return to lay the fruits of their discoveries at the feet of society.
But woe to him who dares explore that forbidden realm of sex. No matter
how pure the motive, no matter what miseries he sought to remove,
slanders, persecutions and jail await him who dares bear the light of
knowledge into that cave of darkness.
So great was the ignorance of the women and girls I met concerning their
own bodies that I decided to specialize in woman’s diseases and took up
gynecological and obstetrical nursing.
A few years of this work brought me to a shocking discovery—that
knowledge of the methods of controlling birth was accessible to the
women of wealth while the working women were deliberately kept in
ignorance of this knowledge!
I found that the women of the working class were as anxious to obtain
this knowledge as their sisters of wealth, but that they were told that
there are laws on the statute books against imparting it to them. And
the medical profession was most religious in obeying these laws when the
patient was a poor woman.
I found that the women of the working class had emphatic views on the
crime of bringing children into the world to die of hunger. They would
rather risk their lives through abortion than give birth to little ones
they could not feed and care for.
For the laws against imparting this knowledge force these women into the
hands of the filthiest midwives and the quack abortionists—unless they
bear unwanted children—with the consequence that the deaths from
abortions are almost wholly among the working-class women.
No other country in the world has so large a number of abortions nor so
large a number of deaths of women resulting therefrom as the United
States of America. Our law makers close their virtuous eyes. A most
conservative estimate is that there are 250,000 abortions performed in
this country every year.
How often have I stood at the bedside of a woman in childbirth and seen
the tears flow in gladness and heard the sigh of “Thank God!” when told
that her child was born dead! What can man know of the fear and dread of
unwanted pregnancy? What can man know of the agony of carrying beneath
one’s heart a little life which tells the mother every instant that it
cannot survive? Even were it born alive the chances are that it would
perish within a year.
Do you know that three hundred thousand babies under one year of age die
in the United States every year from poverty and neglect, while six
hundred thousand parents remain in ignorance of how to prevent three
hundred thousand more babies from coming into the world the next year to
die of poverty and neglect?
I found from records concerning women of the underworld that eighty-five
per cent. of them come from parents averaging nine living children. And
that fifty per cent. of these are mentally defective.
We know, too, that among mentally defective parents the birth rate is
four times as great as that of the normal parent. Is this not cause for
alarm? Is it not time for our physicians, social workers and scientists
to face this array of facts and stop quibbling about woman’s morality? I
say this because it is these same people who raise objection to birth
control on the ground that it _may_ cause women to be immoral.
Solicitude for woman’s morals has ever been the cloak Authority has worn
in its age-long conspiracy to keep woman in bondage.
When I was in Spain a year ago, I found that the Spanish woman was far
behind her European sisters in readiness or even desire for modern
freedom. Upon investigation as to the cause of this I found that there
are over five thousand villages and towns in Spain with no means of
travel, transportation and communication save donkeys over bridle paths.
I was told that all attempts to build roads and railroads in Spain had
been met with the strongest opposition of the Clergy and the Government
on the ground that roads and railroads would make communication easier
and bring the women of the country into the cities _where they would
meet their downfall_.
Do we who have roads and railroads think our women are less moral than
the Spanish women? Certainly not. But we in this country are, after all,
just emerging from the fight for a higher education of women which met
with the same objection only a few years ago.
We know now that education has not done all the dreadful things to women
that its opponents predicted were certain to result. And so shall we
find that knowledge to control birth, which has been in the hands of the
women of wealth for the past twenty-five years, will not tend to lower
woman’s standard of morality.
Statistics show us that the birth-rate of any given quarter is in ratio
with and to its wealth. And further figures prove that in large cities
the rich districts yield a birth-rate of a third of that of the poor
districts. In Paris for every 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 50
the poor districts yield 116 births and the rich districts 34 births. In
Berlin conditions are approximately the same. For every 1,000 women
between the ages of 15 and 50 the poor districts yield 157 births while
the rich yield 47. This applies also to all large cities the world over.
It can be inferred from these figures that the women of wealth use means
to control birth which is condemned when taught to the poor. But the
menace to our civilization, the problem of the day, is not the
stationary birth-rate among the upper classes so much as the tremendous
increase among the poor and diseased population of this country....
Is woman’s health not to be considered? Is she to remain a producing
machine? Is she to have time to think, to study, to care for herself?
Man cannot travel to his goal alone. And until woman has knowledge to
control birth she cannot get the time to think and develop. Until she
has the time to think, neither the suffrage question nor the social
question nor the labor question will interest her, and she will remain
the drudge that she is and her husband the slave that he is just as long
as they continue to supply the market with cheap labor.
Let me ask you: Has the State any more right to ravish a woman against
her will by keeping her in ignorance than a man has through brute force?
Has the State a better right to decide when she shall bear offspring?
Picture a woman with five or six little ones living on the average
working man’s wage of ten dollars a week. The mother is broken in health
and spirit, a worn out shadow of the woman she once was. Where is the
man or woman who would reproach me for trying to put into this woman’s
hands knowledge that will save her from giving birth to any more babies
doomed to certain poverty and misery and perhaps to disease and death.
Am I to be classed as immoral because I advocate small families for the
working class while Mr. Roosevelt can go up and down the length of the
land shouting and urging these women to have large families and is
neither arrested nor molested but considered by all society as highly
moral?
But I ask you which is the more moral—to urge this class of women to
have only those children she desires and can care for, or to delude her
into breeding thoughtlessly. Which is America’s definition of morality?
You will agree with me that a woman should be free.
Yet no adult woman who is ignorant of the means to prevent conception
can call herself free.
No woman can call herself free who cannot choose the time to be a mother
or not as she sees fit. This should be woman’s first demand.
Our present laws force woman into one of two ways: Celibacy, with its
nervous results, or abortion. All modern physicians testify that both
these conditions are harmful; that celibacy is the cause of many nervous
complaints, while abortion is a disgrace to a civilized community.
Physicians claim that early marriage with knowledge to control birth
would do away with both. For this would enable two young people to live
and work together until such time as they could care for a family. I
found that young people desire early marriage, and would marry early
were it not for the dread of a large family to support. Why will not
society countenance and advance this idea? Because it is still afraid of
the untried and the unknown.
I saw that fortunes were being spent in establishing baby nurseries,
where new babies are brought and cared for while the mothers toil in
sweatshops during the day. I saw that society with its well-intentioned
palliatives was in this respect like the quack, who cures a cancer by
burning off the top while the deadly disease continues to spread
underneath. I never felt this more strongly than I did three years ago,
after the death of the patient in my last nursing case.
This patient was the wife of a struggling working man—the mother of
three children—who was suffering from the results of a self-attempted
abortion. I found her in a very serious condition, and for three weeks
both the attending physician and myself labored night and day to bring
her out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. We finally succeeded in
restoring her to her family.
I remember well the day I was leaving. The physician, too, was making
his last call. As the doctor put out his hand to say “Good-bye,” I saw
the patient had something to say to him, but was shy and timid about
saying it. I started to leave the room, but she called me back and said:
“Please don’t go. How can both of you leave me without telling me what I
can do to avoid another illness such as I have just passed through?”
I was interested to hear what the answer of the physician would be, and
I went back and sat down beside her in expectation of hearing a
sympathetic reply. To my amazement, he answered her with a joking sneer.
We came away.
Three months later, I was aroused from my sleep one midnight. A
telephone call from the husband of the same woman requested me to come
immediately as she was dangerously ill. I arrived to find her beyond
relief. Another conception had forced her into the hands of a cheap
abortionist, and she died at four o’clock the same morning, leaving
behind her three small children and a frantic husband.
I returned home as the sun was coming over the roofs of the Human
Bee-Hive, and I realized how futile my efforts and my work had been. I,
too, like the philanthropists and social workers, had been dealing with
the symptoms rather than the disease. I threw my nursing bag into the
corner and announced to my family that I would never take another case
until I had made it possible for working women in America to have
knowledge of birth control.
I found, to my utter surprise, that there was very little scientific
information on the question available in America. Although nearly every
country in Europe had this knowledge, we were the only civilized people
in the world whose postal laws forbade it.
The tyranny of the censorship of the post office is the greatest menace
to liberty in the United States to-day. The post office was never
intended to be a moral or ethical institution. It was intended to be
mechanically efficient; certainly not to pass upon the opinions in the
matter it conveys. If we concede this power to this institution, which
is only a public service, we might just as well give to the street car
companies and railroads the right to refuse to carry passengers whose
ideas they do not like.
I will not take up the story of the publication of “The Woman Rebel.”
You know how I began to publish it, how it was confiscated and
suppressed by the post office authorities, how I was indicted and
arrested for bringing it out, and how the case was postponed time and
time again and finally dismissed by Judge Clayton in the Federal Court.
These, and many more obstacles and difficulties were put in the path of
this philosophy and this work to suppress it if possible and discredit
it in any case.
My work has been to arouse interest in the subject of birth control in
America, and in this, I feel that I have been successful. The work now
before us is to crystallize and to organize this interest into action,
not only for the repeal of the laws but for the establishment of free
clinics in every large center of population in the country where
scientific, individual information may be given every adult person who
comes to ask it.
In Holland there are fifty-two clinics with nurses in charge, and the
medical profession has practically handed the work over to nurses. In
these clinics, which are mainly in the industrial and agricultural
districts, any woman who is married or old enough to be married, can
come for information and be instructed in the care and hygiene of her
body.
These clinics have been established for thirty years in Holland, and the
result has been that the general death-rate of Holland has fallen to the
lowest of any country in Europe. Also, the infant mortality of Amsterdam
and The Hague is found to be the lowest of any city in the world.
Holland proves that the practice of birth control leads to race
improvement; her increase of population has accelerated as the
death-rate has fallen.
In England, France, Scandinavia, and Germany, information regarding
birth control is also freely disseminated, but the establishment of
clinics in these countries is not so well organized as it is in Holland,
with the consequence that the upper and middle classes, as in this
country, have ready access to this knowledge, while the poor continue to
multiply because of their lack of it. This leads, especially in France,
to a high infant mortality, which, rather than a low birth-rate, is the
real cause of her decreasing population.
We in America should learn a lesson from this, and I would urge
immediate group action to form clinics at once. We have in this country
a splendid foundation in our hospital system and settlement work. The
American trained nurse is the best equipped and most capable in the
world, which enables us, if we begin work at once, to accomplish as much
in ten years’ time as the European countries have done in thirty years.
The clinic I established in the Brownsville district of Brooklyn
accomplished at least this: it showed the need and usefulness of such an
agency.
The free clinic is the solution for our problem. It will enable women to
help themselves, and will have much to do with disposing of this
soul-crushing charity which is at best a mere temporary relief.
Woman must be protected from incessant childbearing before she can
actively participate in the social life. She must triumph over Nature’s
and Man’s laws which have kept her in bondage. Just as man has triumphed
over Nature by the use of electricity, shipbuilding, bridges, etc., so
must woman triumph over the laws which have made her a childbearing
machine.
_RACE REGENERATION. HAVELOCK ELLIS. New Tracts for the Times. Cassell
& Co., Ltd., London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne. 1911._
HENRY HAVELOCK ELLIS: L.S.A. Hon. Member Medico-legal Society of New
York. Hon. Fellow of the Chicago Academy of Medicine; Foreign Associate
of the Societe Medico-Historique of Paris, etc.; General Editor of the
Contemporary Science Series (1889); born Croydon, Surrey, 2nd Feb.,
1859; belonging on both sides to families connected with the sea; spent
much of childhood on sea, (Pacific, etc.); educated, private schools;
St. Thomas’s Hospital; engaged in teaching in various parts of New South
Wales, 1875–79. Returned to England and qualified as medical man, but
only practiced for a short time, having become absorbed in scientific
and literary work. Edited the Mermaid Series of Old Dramatists, 1887–89.
Publications: The New Spirit, 1890; The Criminal, 1890 (4th edition
revised and enlarged 1910); Man and Woman, a Study of Human Secondary
Sexual Characters, 1894 (5th edition revised and enlarged 1914); Sexual
Inversion, being Vol. II of Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1897 (3rd
edition revised and enlarged 1915); Affirmations, 1897; The Evolution of
Modesty, etc., being vol. I of the studies in Psychology of Sex, 1899
(3rd edition revised and enlarged, 1910); The 19th Century; A Dialogue
in Utopia, 1900; A Study of British Genius, 1904; Analysis of the Sexual
Impulse, 1903, (2nd edition revised and enlarged 1913); Sexual Selection
in Man, 1905; Erotic Symbolism, 1906; Sex in Relation to Society, being
vols. 3, 4, 5 and 6 of studies in psychology of sex; The Soul of Spain,
1908; The World of Dreams, 1911; The Task of Social Hygiene, 1912;
Impressions and Comments, 1914; Essays In War Time, 1916.
When we survey the movement of social reform which has been carried on
during the past one hundred years, we thus see that it is proceeding in
four stages. 1—The effort to clear away the gross filth of our cities,
to improve the dwellings, to introduce sanitation, and to combat
disease. 2—The attempt to attack the problem more thoroughly by
regulating conditions of work, and introducing the elaborate system of
factory legislation. 3—The still more fundamental step of taking in hand
the children who have not yet reached the age of work, nationalizing
education, and ultimately pushing back the care and over-sight of
infants to the moment of birth. 4—Finally, most fundamental step of all,
the effort, which is still only beginning to provide the conditions of
healthy life even before birth. It must be remembered that this movement
in all its four stages is still in active progress among us. It is not
mere ancient history. On the contrary, it is a movement that is
constantly spreading and at every point becoming more thorough, more
harmoniously organized. Before long it will involve a national medical
service, which will impose on doctors as their primary duty, not the
care of disease, but the preservation of health. We have to realize at
the same time that this movement has been exclusively concerned, not
with the improvement of the quality of human life, but exclusively with
the betterment of the conditions under which life is lived. It tacitly
assumed that we have no control over human life and no responsibility
for its production. It accepted human life—however numerous it might be
in quantity, however defective in quality—as a God given fact, which it
would be impious to question. It heroically set itself to the endless
task of cleansing the channels down which this muddy torrent swept. It
never went to the source. Only take care of the soil, these workers at
social reform said in effect, and the seed is no matter. That, as we can
now see, was a silly enough position to take up. P. 26.
Here we have been spending enormous enthusiasm, labor and money in
improving the conditions of life, with the notion in our heads that we
should thereby be improving life itself, and after 70 years we find no
convincing proof that the quality of our people is one whit better than
it was when for a large part they lived in filth, were ravaged by
disease, bred at random, soaked themselves in alcohol, and took no
thought for the morrow. Our boasted social reform has been a matter of
bricks and mortar—a piling up of hospitals, asylums, prisons and
workhouses—while our comparatively sober habits may be merely a sign of
the quietly valetudinarian way of life imposed on a race no longer
possessing the stamina to withstand excess.
One of the most obvious tests of our degree of success in social reform
directed to the betterment of social conditions is to be found in the
amount of our pauperism, and the condition of our paupers. If the
amelioration of the conditions of life can effect even a fraction of
what has been expected of it, the results ought to be seen in the
diminution of our pauperism, and the improvement of the condition of our
paupers. Yet so far as numbers are concerned, the vast army of our
paupers has remained fairly constant during the whole period of social
reform, if indeed it has not increased. As to the ineffectiveness of our
methods the Royal Commissioners, especially perhaps in their Minority
Report, have shed much light. It was to be expected that these muddled
methods should be most marked in all that concerns the beginnings of
life, for that is precisely where our whole treatment of social reform
has been most at fault. Children under 16 form nearly one-third of the
paupers relieved. In the United Kingdom the Poor Law authorities have on
their books as outdoor paupers, 50,000 infants under four years of age.
As regards the annual number of births in the Poor Law institutions of
the United Kingdom, there are not even definite statistics available,
but it is estimated in the Minority Report that the number is probably
over 15,000, 30% of these being legitimate children, and 70%
illegitimate. There is no system in the treatment of mothers; and often
not the most elementary care in the treatment of the infants. It is
scarcely surprising that though the general infant mortality is
excessively high, the infant mortality of the workhouse babies is two or
three times as high as that among the general population. And the Royal
Commissioners pathetically ask, “To what is this retrogression due? It
cannot be due to lack of expenditure, or to lack of costly and elaborate
machinery.” No, it certainly is not. It is in large part due, as we are
now just beginning to recognize, to the concentration of our activities
on the mere conditions of life, to our neglect of the betterment of life
itself. We have failed to realize that the whitening of our sepulchres
will not limit the number of corpses placed in those sepulchres. It is
the renewal of the spirit within that is needed, not alone the
improvement of material conditions, but the regeneration of life. If we
wish to realize more in detail the slight extent to which our efforts to
better the conditions of life have raised the quality of life itself, we
have but to turn to the problem of the feebleminded, which during recent
years has attracted so much attention. It is necessary to remember that
this feeblemindedness is largely handed on by heredity. Exact
investigation has now shown that feeblemindedness is inherited to an
enormous extent. Some years ago, Dr. Ashby, speaking from a large
experience, estimated that at least 75% of feebleminded children are
born with an inherited tendency to mental defect. More precise
investigation has shown since that this estimate was under the mark. Dr.
Tredgold, who in England has most carefully studied the heredity of the
feebleminded, found that in over 82% there is a bad nervous inheritance.
Heredity is the chief cause of feeblemindedness, and Tredgold has never
seen a normal child born of two feebleminded parents. The very thorough
investigation of the heredity of the feebleminded which is now being
carried on at the institution for their care at Vineland, N. J., shows
even more decisive results. By making careful pedigrees of the families
to which the inmates at Vineland belong it is seen that in a large
proportion of cases feeblemindedness is handed on from generation to
generation, and is transmissible through three generations, though it
sometimes skips a generation. Not only is feeblemindedness inherited,
and in a much greater degree than has been hitherto suspected, but the
feebleminded tend to have a much larger number of children than normal
people. The average number of children of feebleminded people seems to
be usually about one-third more than in normal families, and is
sometimes very much greater. Page 26–36.
And it is not only in themselves that the feebleminded are a burden on
the present generation and a menace to future generations. They are seen
to be often a more serious danger when we realize that in large measure
they form the reservoir from which the predatory classes are recruited.
This is for instance the case as regards the fallen. Feebleminded girls
of fairly high grade may often be said to be predestined to immorality
if left to themselves, not because they are vicious, but because they
are weak and have little power of resistance. They cannot properly weigh
their actions against the results of their actions, and even if they are
intelligent enough to do that, they are still too weak to regulate their
actions accordingly. Moreover, even when, as so often happens among the
high grade feebleminded, they are quite able and willing to work, after
they have lost their respectability by having a child, the opportunities
of work become more restricted and they drift into prostitution.
Criminality again is associated with feeblemindedness in the most
intimate way. Not only do criminals tend to belong to large families,
but the families that produce feebleminded offspring also produce
criminals. P. 40.
Closely related to the great feebleminded class, and from time to time
falling into crime are the inmates of workhouses, tramps and the
unemployable. The so-called able-bodied inmates of our workhouses are
frequently found on medical examination to be more than 50% cases of
mental defectives, equally so whether they are men or women. P. 42.
We have found that this movement for social reform, while it has been
inevitable and necessary, and is even yet by no means at an end, is not
fulfilling, and cannot fulfil the expectations of those who set it in
motion. It has even had the altogether undesigned and unexpected result
of increasing the burden it was intended to remove. Whatever the exact
action of natural selection may be, as soon as we begin to interfere
with it, and improve the conditions of life by caring for the unfit,
enabling them to survive and to propagate their like, as they will not
fail to do, insofar as they belong to the unfit stocks, then we are
certainly, without intending it, doing our best to lower the level of
life. We increase, or at best retain the unfit, while at the same time
we burden the fit with the task of providing for the unfit. In this way
we deteriorate the general quality of life in the next generation,
except insofar as our improvement of the environment may enable some to
remain fit, who under less favorable conditions would join the unfit. It
is now possible for us to realize how the way lies open to the next
great forward step in social reform. On the one hand the progressive
movement of improvement in the conditions of life, by proceeding
steadily back, as we have seen, to the conditions before birth, renders
the inevitable next step a deliberate controlled life itself. On the
other hand, the new social feeling which has been generated by the task
of improving the conditions of life, and of caring for those who are
unable to care for themselves, has made possible a new explanation of
responsibility to the race. We have realized practically and literally
that we are “our brother’s keepers.” We are beginning to realize that we
are the keepers of our children of the race that is to come after us.
Our sense of social responsibility is becoming a sense of racial
responsibility. It is that enlarged sense of responsibility which
renders possible what we call the regeneration of the race. We cannot
lay too much stress on this sense of responsibility for it is its growth
which alone renders possible any regeneration of the race. So far as
practical results are concerned, it is not enough for men of science to
investigate the facts and the principles of heredity and to attempt to
lay down the laws of eugenics, as the science which deals with the
improvement of the race is now called. It is not alone enough for
moralists to preach. The hope of the future lies in the slow development
of those habits, those social instincts arising inevitably out of the
actual facts of life, and deeper than science, deeper than morals. The
new sense of responsibility, not only for the human lives that now are,
but the new human lives that are to come, is a social instinct of this
fundamental nature. Therein lies its vitality and its promise. It is
only of recent years that it has been rendered possible. Until lately,
the methods of propagating the race continued to be the same as those of
savages thousands of years ago. Children “came” and their parents
disclaimed all responsibility for their coming; the children were sent
by God, and if they all turned out to be idiots, the responsibility was
God’s. That is all changed now. It is we who are more immediately the
creators of men. We generate the race; we alone can regenerate the race.
We have learned that in this, as in other matters, the Divine Force
works through us and that we are not entitled to cast the burden of our
evil actions on to any higher Power. The voluntary control of the number
of offspring which is now becoming the rule in all civilized countries
in every part of the world has been a matter of concern to some people,
who have realized that however desirable under the conditions, it may be
abused. But there are two points about it which they should do well
always to bear in mind. In the first place, it is the inevitable result
of the advance in civilization. Reckless abandonment to the impulse of
the moment, and careless indifference to the morrow, the selfish
gratification of individual desire at the expense of probable suffering
to lives that will come after, this may seem beautiful to some people,
but it is not civilization. All civilization involves an ever-increasing
forethought for others, even for others who are yet unborn. In the
second place, it is not only inevitable, but it furnishes us with the
one available lever for raising the level of our race. In classic days,
as in the East, it was possible to consider infanticide as a permissible
method for attaining this end. That is no longer possible to us. We must
go further back. We must control the beginnings of life. And that is a
better method, even a more civilized method, for it involves greater
forethought, and a finer sense of the value of life. To-day, all classes
in the community, save the lowest and most unfit, exercise some degree
of forethought and control in regulating the size of their families.
That it should be precisely the unfit who procreate in the most reckless
manner is a lamentable fact, but it is not a hopeless fact, and there is
no need for the desperate remedy of urging the fit to reduce themselves
in this matter to the level of the unfit. That would merely be a
backward movement of civilization. It is education, sobriety, and some
degree of well-being which lead to the control of the size of families,
and as it is social amelioration which brings this result about, it is a
result that we may view with equanimity. It used to be feared that a
falling birth rate was a national danger. We now know that this is not
the case, for not only does a falling birth rate lead to a falling death
rate, but in this matter no nation moves by itself. Civilization is
international, though one nation may be a little before or behind
another. Hitherto France has been ahead, but all other nations have
followed. In Germany, for instance, sometimes regarded as a rival of
England, the birth rate has fallen just as in England. Russia indeed is
an exception, but Russia is not only behind England, but behind Germany
in the march of civilization; its birth rate is high, its death rate is
high; a large proportion of its population live on the verge of famine.
We are not likely to take Russia as our guide in this matter; we have
gone through that stage long ago. But at the stage we have now reached
it is no longer a question of gaining control over the production of the
new generation, but of using that control, and of using it in such a way
that we may help to leave the world better than we found it. “What has
posterity done for me that I should do anything for posterity,” someone
is said to have asked? The answer is that to the human race that went
before him he owes everything, and that he can only repay the debt to
those who come after him. There is more than one way in which we can
repay our debt to the race, but there is no better way than by leaving
behind us those who are fit to carry on the tasks of life to higher ends
than we have ourselves perhaps been able to attain. Children have been
without value in the world because there have been too many of them;
they have been produced by a blind and helpless instinct, and have been
allowed to die by the hundred thousand. For more than half a century
after the era of social reform set in there was no decline at all in the
enormous infant mortality. It has only now begun, as the inevitable
accompaniment of the decline in the birth rate. Not the least service
done by the fall in the birth rate has been to teach us the worth of our
children. We possess the power, if we will, deliberately and consciously
to create a new race, to mold the world of the future. As we realize our
responsibility we see that our new power of control is not merely for
the end of limiting the quantity of human life, perhaps for a selfish
object, but for the high end of improving its quality. It is in our
power not only to generate life, but, if we will, to regenerate life. If
we realize that possibility, and if we understand how the course of
civilization has now brought it within our grasp, we have reached the
heart of our problem. Our greatest foe, apart from indifference, is
ignorance. Even science in this field is only beginning to feel its way,
while the mass have still to unlearn many prejudices of the past. P.
48–54.
Galton, during the last years of his life, believed that we are
approaching a time when eugenic considerations will become a factor of
religion, and when our existing religious conceptions will be
reinterpreted in the light of a sense of social needs, so enlarged as to
include the needs of the race which is to come. Certainly for those who
have been taught to believe that man was in the first place created by
God, it should not be difficult to realize the divine nature of the task
of human creation which has since been placed in the hands of man, to
recognize it as a practical part of religion, and to cherish a sense of
its responsibility. P. 63.
_THE SEXUAL QUESTION. August Forel. A Scientific, Psychological,
Hygienic and Sociological Study. Translated by C. F. Marshall,
M.D., F.R.C.S. Late Assistant Surgeon to the Hospital for Diseases
of the Skin. London._
AUGUST FOREL: Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa; Doctor of Laws honoris
causa. Born September 1848 at Morges, Switzerland. Educated at
University of Zurich and Vienna. In 1873 assistant physician at the
district insane asylum at Munich; 1877, Privat-dozent at the University;
1879, Privat-dozent and then Professor at Zurich, and until 1898
Director of the State Insane Asylum at Burgholzli near Zurich. Works:
Experience et remarques crit. sur les sensations des insectes (in 4 vol.
of Recueil Zoolog. suisse Genf. 1886–7) Giftapparat u. d. Analdrusen der
Ameisen, 1878; Les Fourmis de la Suisse, 1874; Errichtg. v.
Trinkerasylen, 1891; D. Hypnotismus; Gehirn und Seele; Hygiene der
Nerven und des Geistes; Die Sexuelle Frage; Verbrecher und Konstit.
Seelenabnormitat; Ges. Hirnanah. Abhandl; Sinnesleben d. Insekten;
Kulturstrebungen der Gegenwart.
He discovered in 1885 the seat of the auditory nerves in the brain;
researches into the psychology of ants.
We must not forget that among our brutal, yet human ancestors, the
struggle for life demanded the cruel and wanton exposure or slaughter of
all weak and decrepit individuals, and that epidemic diseases, plagues,
and pests ravaged the peoples without mercy. Of course our present
civilization has put up a barrier against all this. Yet for that very
reason, the blind and thoughtless propagation of degenerate, tainted and
enfeebled individuals is another atrocious danger to society. But then
the sexual appetite cannot be legislated out of existence, or killed by
repressive measures. We can but consider all legislation and all police
measures which are intended to regulate the sexual intercourse in the
human family as absolute failures, as inhuman, in fact as downright
detrimental to the race. Exacting laws have never improved the morals of
any race or nation, hypocrisy and secret evasion are the only results
obtained. It would be better by far if steps were taken to enlighten the
masses on the questions of sexual heredity and degeneration. Wisdom of
this kind does not corrupt.
The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history
of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. And
we should sit still and watch our civilization go into decay and fall to
pieces without raising the cry of warning and applying the remedy?
The sexual appetite is very pronounced in tuberculous persons. They
marry and beget children in the most wanton fashion. The law cannot and
does not prevent them, and the carnal instinct is not to be killed. What
is to be done when law and religion forbid the application of preventive
measures and even prosecute the person that recommends them? Local
diseases and pathological conditions in the woman (at times in man also)
within wedlock, may render parturition and immediate danger to the life
of the mother or of the child, or of both together. Surely in such cases
it is the bounden duty of the physician to intervene and counsel
against, nay absolutely forbid impregnation. Well, how is it to be done?
Must husband and wife who love each other be separated? It would be
unnatural, in fact it is quite impossible. Or should they abandon sexual
intercourse altogether and live like brother and sister? Well, a few
exceptionally cold natures may have will power enough to carry into
effect such a pact. But in 99 out of 100 cases the interdict of the
sexual act sends the husband to satisfy his cravings elsewhere and
contract disease, or he falls in love with another woman and wrecks home
and family. Similar conditions may be brought about by other causes as
well. Take for instance, the poor working man, or mechanic, who has
already six or seven children, and whose wife is unusually fertile,
giving birth to children year after year. The wages of the father do not
suffice to properly support them all. The food that can be purchased
with the slender means is not at all adequate. Rent and other bills fall
behind and they get in debt. They are both young yet. What is to be
done? If they follow the natural law there will be an increase in the
family every year. Moreover, these ever-recurring labors weaken the
constitution of the mother and sap away her strength. Starvation? Sexual
continence in wedlock? It is curious indeed to hear rich men, well fed
clergymen, pious zealots and reformers, leaning back in comfortable
chairs discussing this burning question and bewailing the immorality of
the common people. Statistics prove that these very people who extol to
the poor all the blessings of a poor family never live up to their
teachings, either in theory or in practice. The majority of these
apostles of morality have no children at all or at the utmost two or
three. Why should that be so? What interesting reading it would make if
the sexual history of these persons were followed up and printed.
Many hygienic reasons and the most elemental laws of humanity demand
that the wife who is fertile above the average should have a rest of at
least 18 months between each succeeding pregnancy. But this cannot be
achieved in the natural course of events except in very rare cases
without wrecking the marriage. If we crystallize this sexual social
question we arrive at the following conclusions: There are a great many
cases, especially of a pathological character, but none the less, also,
in normal and sound individuals, in which procreation within wedlock or
without either definitely or temporarily either for the mother or the
child, or for both, and for that reason should be interdicted. Very few
men and a very small proportion of women—no matter how firmly they may
be resolved—are capable of suppressing their sexual needs. Even if they
succeed the consequences are generally of a disastrous nature, loss of
marital love, secret illicit relations with others, and subsequent
infidelity, nervous disorders, impotence, etc. In all these cases we are
confronted with the following dilemma: 1—In the unmarried person:
onanism or prostitution, or both. Is that morality? Such people must
either forever forego love, marriage, and normal lawful sexual
intercourse, or face sterility in wedded life. 2—Within marriage:
onanism, prostitution and infidelity, or the adoption of rational
preventive measures. I leave it to the reader, and to the law maker to
pick out the correct alternative and to arrive at the one possible
decent and ethical solution of these conflicting questions.
It seems almost incredible that in some countries medical men who are
not ashamed to throw young men into the arms of prostitution, blush when
mention is made of anti-conceptional measures. P. 427b.
A year, at least, should elapse between parturition and the next
conception; this gives approximately two years between the confinements.
In this way the wife keeps in good health and can bear healthy children
at pleasure. It is certainly better to procreate seven children, than to
procreate 14, of which seven die, to say nothing of the mother, who
rapidly becomes exhausted by uninterrupted confinements. P. 430.
It is quite certain that the sexual life of man can never raise above
its present state without being freed from the bonds of mysticism and
religious dogma, and based on a loyal and unequivocal human morality
which will recognize the normal wants of humanity, always having as its
principle object the welfare of posterity. P. 459.
The true task of a political economy which has the true happiness of man
at heart should be to encourage the procreation of happy, useful,
healthy and hard-working individuals. To build an ever increasing number
of hospitals, asylums for lunatics, idiots and incurables,
reformatories, etc., to provide them with every comfort and manage them
scientifically, is undoubtedly a very fine thing, and speaks well of the
progress and development of human sympathy. But what is forgotten is
that by concerning ourselves almost exclusively with human ruins, the
results of our social abuses, we gradually weaken the force of the
healthy portion of the population. By attacking the roots of the evil
and limiting the procreation of the unfit we shall be performing a work
which is much more humanitarian, if less striking in effect. Formerly,
our economists and politicians hardly have considered this question, and
even now very few are interested in it because it brings no honors, nor
money, as we do not ourselves see the fruits of such efforts. In short,
we amuse ourselves with repairing the ruins, but are afraid to attack
what makes these ruins. P. 465–6.
The anti-conceptional measures recommended have been often condemned,
sometimes as immoral, sometimes as contrary to aesthetics. To interfere
in this way with the action of nature is said to injure the poetry of
love and the moral feeling, and at the same time to disturb natural
selection. There are several replies to these objections. In the first
place, it is wrong to maintain that man cannot encroach on the life of
nature. If this were the case, the earth would now be a virgin forest,
and a great many plants and animals would not have been adapted to the
use of man. We have proved without deference, often with a brutal hand,
to the misfortune of art and poetry, that we are capable of successfully
meddling with the machinery of nature, even in what concerns our own
persons.
The aesthetic argument appears, at first sight, more valid. It is
unnecessary, however, to discuss matters of taste. From all points of
view, the details of coitus leave much to be desired from the aesthetic
point of view, and such a slight addition as a protective does not
appear to make any serious difference. P. 497–8.
She, (woman) ought to develop herself strongly and healthily by working
along with man in body and mind by procreating numerous children when
she is strong, robust and intelligent. But this does not nullify the
advantage that may accrue from limiting the number of conceptions when
the bodily and mental qualities are wanting in the procreators. P. 332.
One of the most difficult and important future tasks of social science
toward humanity is to set free sexual relations from the tyranny of
religious dogmas by placing them in harmony with the true and purely
human laws of natural science. P. 357.
In no animal do we find the abuses which man is permitted to practice
toward his wife and children. P. 368.
The law should abandon its useless and even harmful chicanery concerning
the questions of sexual relations and love, and regulate more carefully
the duties of parents toward their children, and thus protect future
generations against the abuses of the present generation. P. 377.
It is important to bear in mind that modern legislation on marriage
often favors the reproduction of criminals, lunatics and invalids, while
it hinders the production of healthy children by men who are
intelligent, honest and robust. When an abnormal, unhealthy man is
married his wife is obliged to submit to the conception of tainted
children. What we require is more personal liberty for healthy,
adaptable individuals and more restrictions for the abnormal, unhealthy
and dangerous. The civil law of the future will have to take these facts
into consideration if it wishes to keep level with scientific progress.
P. 393.
_THE DISEASES OF SOCIETY AND DEGENERACY. THE VICE AND CRIME PROBLEM.
G. F. Lydston, M.D., Professor of Genito-Urinary Surgery, State
University of Illinois. Prof. of Criminal Anthropology, Chicago,
Kent College of Law; Member of the American Medical Association,
etc., etc. The Riverton Press, Chicago, 1912._
The responsibility of rearing a large number of useful and upright
citizens is a little too great for the poor family drudge who
manipulates the wash board with one hand, holding a squealing baby with
the other, and simultaneously attempts to keep in control a dozen other
demonstrative and lusty children. She has a difficult task before her,
even where her environment is favorable to the rearing of children, but
where the children are brought into contact with evil associates as they
are very likely to be when parental control is so lax as it necessarily
is under such circumstances, they are not likely to become either
ornamental or useful factors in our social system. If more attention
were paid to quality of both parentage and children, and less fretting
done as to the possible disasters to the nation incidental to small
numbers of children, it would be better for the race. At the present
day, when practically no attention is paid to stirpiculture in the human
species, it seems absurd to worry about diminution in size of the
American family. Is the function of the wife altogether that of a
breeding machine? Has she no personal rights? Should she be sacrificed
to posterity? Is it always her duty to rear a large family?
Unhesitatingly I answer no to each question. The perpetuation of the
race depends upon matrimony, it is true. It is not however woman’s
function merely to increase numbers at the expense of her own life and
comfort. This is a fallacy and an injustice to womanhood, and should be
contradicted from the house-tops. The woman who is merely a beast of
burden, a breeder of children, is a failure in modern life. Quality of
progeny is not conserved along such lines, and quality, not quantity,
makes for the elevation of the human race. Woman should not be
sacrificed to posterity. Something is due her as a social integer. She
is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. She, as well
as man, comes within the provisions of the constitution. Better a single
child properly reared by a happy contented mother than a dozen ill-fed,
unkempt, dirty, vicious and half-baked hoodlums. “Multiply and replenish
the earth” was once sound doctrine, but it does not uniformly fit modern
conditions. The scriptural injunction should be qualified. The
multiplication should not extend beyond the parents capacity to
comfortably rear and educate their children, nor beyond the number
consistent with the preservation of the mother’s health and happiness.