Margaret Sanger

IS REVOLUTION THE REMEDY

This chapter provides an overview of Marxian socialism. Marxian socialism, which seeks to solve the complex problem of human misery by economic and proletarian revolution, has manifested a new vitality. Every shade of Socialistic thought and philosophy acknowledges its indebtedness to the vision of Karl Marx and his conception of the class struggle. Yet, the relation of Marxian Socialism to the philosophy of birth control, especially in the minds of most Socialists, remains hazy and confused. No thorough understanding of birth control, its aims and purposes, is possible until this confusion has been cleared away, and it is realized that birth control is not merely independent of, but even antagonistic to the Marxian dogma. Many socialists have embraced the doctrine of birth control, and have generously promised that under Socialism voluntary motherhood will be adopted and popularized as part of a general educational system. However, many socialists remain ignorant of the inherent conflict between the idea of birth control and the philosophy of Marx.

WOMAN AND THE FUTURE

This chapter focuses on woman and the future. Women can attain freedom only by concrete, definite knowledge of themselves, a knowledge based on biology, physiology, and psychology. The chapter describes an era in which the great adventures in the enchanted realm of the arts and sciences may no longer be the privilege of a gifted few but the rightful heritage of a race of genius. In such a world, men and women would no longer seek escape from themselves by the fantastic and the faraway. They would be awakened to the realization that the source of life and happiness is to be found not outside themselves but within in the healthful exercise of their God-given functions. Men and women of the future will not seek happiness; they will have gone beyond it. Mere happiness would produce monotony.

NEGLECTED FACTORS OF THE WORLD PROBLEM

This chapter focuses on the neglected factors of the world problem. For in all problems affecting the welfare of a biological species, and particularly in all problems of human welfare, two fundamental forces work against each other. There is hunger as the driving force of all economic, industrial, and commercial organizations; and there is the reproductive impulse in continual conflict with economic, political settlements, race adjustments and the like. The chapter highlights that while the gravest attention is paid to the problem of hunger and food, that of sex is neglected. Politicians and social scientists are ready and willing to speak of such things as a high birth rate, infant mortality, and the dangers of immigration or overpopulation. However, with few exceptions they cannot bring themselves to speak of birth control.

A NEW TRUTH EMERGES

This chapter discusses the use of concrete and challenging examples, and neglected facts, and the need of a new approach to individual and social problems. Civilization, in any true sense of the word, is based upon the control and guidance of the great natural instinct of sex. Mastery of this force is possible only through the instrument of birth control. The program for birth control is not a charity. It neither aims to interfere in the private lives of poor people, to tell them how many children they should have, nor to sit in judgment upon their fitness to become parents. It aims, rather, to awaken responsibility, to answer the demand for a scientific means by which and through which each human life may be self-directed and self-controlled. The exponent of birth control is convinced that social regeneration, no less than individual regeneration, must come from within.

EDUCATION AND EXPRESSION

This chapter discusses the role of sex education in birth control program. As an instrument of education, the doctrine of birth control approaches the whole problem in another manner. Instead of laying down hard and fast laws of sexual conduct, instead of attempting to inculcate rules and regulations, of pointing out the rewards of virtue and the penalties of sin, the teacher of birth control seeks to meet the needs of the people. Upon the basis of their interests, demands, and problems, birth control education attempts to develop their intelligence and show them how they may help themselves; how to guide and control this deep-rooted instinct. Like all other education, that of sex can be rendered effective and valuable only as it meets and satisfies the interests and demands of the pupil himself. It cannot be imposed from without, handed down from above, superimposed upon the intelligence of the person taught.

THE FERTILITY OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED

This chapter discusses the problems associated with fertility of the feebleminded. There is but one practical and feasible program in handling the great problem of the feebleminded. That is, as the best authorities are agreed, to prevent the birth of those who would transmit imbecility to their descendants. Feeblemindedness, as investigations and statistics from every country indicate, is invariably associated with an abnormally high rate of fertility. Modern conditions of civilization furnish the most favorable breeding ground for the mental defective, the moron, and the imbecile. The philosophy of birth control points out that as long as civilized communities encourage unrestrained fecundity in the normal members of the population—always of course under the cloak of decency and morality—and penalize every attempt to introduce the principle of discrimination and responsibility in parenthood, they will be faced with the ever-increasing problem of feeblemindedness, that fertile parent of degeneracy, crime, and pauperism.

CHILDREN TROOP DOWN FROM HEAVEN

This chapter discusses the neglected aspects of child labor problem. Child labor shows how cheaply a society values childhood. And moreover, it shows that cheap childhood is the inevitable result of chance parenthood. Child labor is organically bound up with the problem of uncontrolled breeding and the large family. The selective draft of 1917—which was designed to choose for military service only those fulfilling definite requirements of physical and mental fitness—showed some of the results of child labor. It established the fact that the majority of American children never got beyond the sixth grade, because they were forced to leave school at that time. The over-advertised compulsory education does not compel—and does not educate. The selective draft revealed that 38%, of the young men were rejected because of physical ill-health and defects; and 25% were illiterate.

A MORAL NECESSITY

This chapter discusses the moral aspects of birth control. Orthodox opposition to birth control is formulated in the official protest of the National Council of Catholic Women against the resolution passed by the New York State Federation of Womens Clubs that favored the removal of all obstacles to the spread of information regarding practical methods of birth control. The Catholic statement completely embodies traditional opposition to birth control. The authorities at Rome have again and again declared that all positive methods of this nature are immoral and forbidden, states the National Council of Catholic Women. The immorality of birth control as it is practiced and commonly understood consists in the evils of the particular method employed.

THE CRUELTY OF CHARITY

This chapter discusses the cruelty of charity. Contemporary philanthropy recognizes that extreme poverty and overcrowded slums are veritable breeding grounds of epidemics, disease, delinquency, and dependency. Its aim, therefore, is to prevent the individual family from sinking to that abject condition in which it will become a much heavier burden upon society. Organized charity are criticized for: high cost of administration; the pauperization of deserving poor, and the encouragement and fostering of the undeserving; the progressive destruction of self-respect and self-reliance by the paternalistic interference of social agencies; the impossibility of keeping pace with the ever-increasing multiplication of factors and influences responsible for the perpetuation of human misery; the misdirection and misappropriation of endowments; and the absence of interorganization and coordination of the various agencies of church, state, and privately endowed institutions. Organized charity is the symptom of a malignant social disease.

DANGERS OF CRADLE COMPETITION

This chapter discusses the conflict between the Eugenist and the Socialists. Eugenics has been defined as the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations, either mentally or physically. While there is no inherent conflict between Socialism and Eugenics, the latter is, broadly, the antithesis of the former. In its propaganda, Socialism emphasizes the evil effects of industrial and economic system. It insists upon the necessity of satisfying material needs, upon sanitation, hygiene, and education to effect the transformation of society. The Socialist insists that healthy humanity is impossible without a radical improvement of the social—and therefore of the economic and industrial—environment. The Eugenist points out that heredity is the great determining factor in the lives of men and women. Eugenics is the attempt to solve the problem from the biological and evolutionary point of view. Eugenics aims to seek out the root of human troubles, to study humanity as a kinetic, dynamic, evolutionary organism, shifting and changing with the successive generations, rising and falling, cleansing itself of inherent defects, or under adverse and dysgenic influences, and sinking into degeneration and deterioration.