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 COUNTRIES		23
	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

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.

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.

(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.

In the countries covered by this chapter Birth Control has been recognised as a legitimate science; leagues advocating the prevention of conception have been formed; and the leading authorities have approved the practice as being the foundation of a better social structure.

THE CONTROL OF BIRTHS. MARY ALDEN HOPKINS. Harper’s Weekly, April 10th, 1915.

The European laws on this subject are in striking contrast to ours. They treat contraception and abortion as two separate matters. The laws against abortion are strict. The laws concerning contraception are directed against distasteful advertising but not against private advice or public propaganda. In England the applicant must state in writing over his or her signature that he or she is married or about to be married. In Holland formulas and methods may be supplied privately, but must not be publicly advertised. In Germany there is no law on the matter, but sentiment is strongly opposed to advertising. In Switzerland it is forbidden to advertise or circularize. In Norway and Sweden advertising is not expected. Italy and France have no law on the subject. In Russia advertising in the newspapers is common. Everywhere in Europe contraceptives are for sale at pharmacies.

The Birth Control Movement is antagonistic to the general practice of abortion. The Hungarian senate, a few years ago, declared that the limitation of families by prevention of conception was absolutely necessary in order to check the wide-spread evil of attempted abortion.

Our present laws confuse the issue by classing—in a shockingly ignorant fashion,—contraception, abortion, and pornography, in the same category. The group is treated in the New York State Penal Code under the astonishing title of “Indecent Articles.” The eye of the law distinguishes no difference between the books of August Forel, a scientist revered in laboratories all over the world, and the obscene penny postcard sold by some slinking vendor.

THE MALTHUSIAN LEAGUE OF ENGLAND. The Origin and History of Birth Control in Great Britain. Reprinted from The Malthusian, April, 1880.

Little improvement can be expected in morality until the production of large families is regarded in the same light as drunkenness, or any other physical excess.—John Stuart Mill, 1872.

In obedience to the request of the Nestor of political economists of Europe, the distinguished editor of the Journal des Economistes of Paris, M. Joseph Garnier, we give a short account of the reasons which led to the foundation of the Malthusian League, the latest product of the nineteenth century’s ideas in the direction of social progress. It gives us unfeigned pleasure to be the means of making the most thorough of all French writers on the doctrines of our English latter-day economists acquainted with the position which the great population question has recently assumed in this country. It is not, we believe, too much to allege that the most advanced thinkers of this country are at this moment well aware of the existence of the new-Malthusian remedy for the evils of society. How this has come to pass we proceed at once to show.

It was not long after the publication of Mr. Malthus’ work that some thoughtful men began to notice that in modern France the late marriage customs of most European states were replaced to a certain extent by prudence after marriage. Mr. Francis Place was one of the first to write a work on population, in which he recommended the physical checks so commonly made use of by the French parents for adoption in England. He is said to have remonstrated with Mr. Malthus about an expression in the first edition of his essay, in which he spoke of such checks under the head of Vice, and the tradition is that Malthus left out the expression in his subsequent edition: and, as he himself had two children, Mr. Porter (of Nottingham) believes that Mr. Malthus was, like Mr. Mill (the father of John Stuart Mill), himself a believer in the conjugal prudence practised by the better class of peasantry and townspeople. Mr. Place is also said to have converted Mr. Robert Owen, the socialist to his opinion, and it is believed that Mr. Owen owed the success of his colony of New Lanark to a knowledge of this point, which he communicated to his workmen. Mr. Robert Dale Owen, a son of Robert Owen, emigrated in his youth to the United States of America, and became before his death, in 1877, one of the foremost citizens of the western republic. That gentleman, having doubtless heard the question discussed by his father, Mr. Francis Place, and other friends in London, was induced in 1830 to publish a now well-known treatise on the population question, entitled Moral Physiology, a work written with the most philanthropic design and couched in the most careful language consistent with clearness and the attainment of its end, in which he gave a description of the above-mentioned physical checks. This work was, however, written subsequently to the publication of Mr. Richard Carlile’s tract, entitled Every Woman’s Book, which was a most outspoken work, written by one of those fearless thinkers who have done so much to complete the reformation in England and secure freedom of speech and of the press for this country. Had it not been for him and his co-workers, England might at this day have been in as backward a condition as modern Spain. Dr. Charles Knowlton, an able physician of Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., was the next person who wrote upon this question in his now famous little pamphlet, the Fruits of Philosophy, wherein there was contained a good deal of popular information on physiology, and a careful account of the checks spoken of by Mr. Dale Owen and Mr. Carlile. This work was followed after a long interval by a small pamphlet by Mr. Austin Holyoake, entitled Large and Small Families, which, in company with the tracts by Carlile, Owen, and two other works were sold for many years by booksellers of the ultra-liberal party, latterly styled the Secularists.

In 1876 the Fruits of Philosophy, after circulating without notice for forty years, was suddenly attacked as an obscene publication under an Act of Parliament called “Lord Campbell’s Act,” and a bookseller in Bristol, of the name of Cook, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for selling it. The London publisher of the work, Mr. C. Watts, was also prosecuted for selling it, but, on submission, was let off with merely the payment of costs, or about two hundred pounds fine. The work would have been suppressed had not Mr. C. Bradlaugh, the head of the Secularist party and editor of the National Reformer, the most advanced liberal journal in England, in company with a young but already most distinguished lady, Mrs. Annie Besant, come forward and sold it openly. In order to try the case, Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant entered into partnership in a publishing establishment in Stonecutter Street, Farringdon Street, London, and sold the Fruits of Philosophy quite openly, sending copies of it to the city authorities. Mr. Bradlaugh had for many years been an avowed Malthusian, and the lady also was quite convinced of the importance of the question. Both were determined that no bigoted society should put the work under the ban of the law without a fight for it. The case was first tried at Guildhall, and was sent on to the Court of Queen’s Bench, before the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn. The trial began on the 18th of June, 1877, and lasted three days. The jury contained, among other persons of wealth and position, the name of Arthur Walter, Esq., the son of the proprietor of the Times journal. After a most powerful defence, in which Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh delivered speeches which told most powerfully upon the judge and all present in the Court, the jury delivered the following verdict: “We are unanimously of the opinion that the book in question (the Fruits of Philosophy) is calculated to deprave public morals; but at the same time we entirely exonerate the defendants from any corrupt motives in publishing it.” The judge—who had charged quite in favor of the defendants—would have let them off with a nominal fine, but, influenced by the information that they intended carrying on the sale of the work, strangely sentenced them to a heavy imprisonment and fine. Fortunately, the higher Court of Appeal decided that there had been an error in the indictment, and thus the defendants were set free. The prosecution has not been repeated since that date.

The excitement caused by the trial led to the formation of a society called The Malthusian League, which was set on foot as a means of opposing both active and passive resistance to the attempts made to stifle discussion on the population question. Mr. Bradlaugh had commenced such a league many years previously, but the time was not ripe for it. The first meeting of the League was held in the Minor Hall of the Hall of Science, Old Street, on July 17th, 1877, for the election of officers. That meeting elected Dr. C. R. Drysdale president, and Mrs. Annie Besant honorary secretary, in company with Mr. Hember and Mr. R. Shearer. The Council of the League consisted of Messrs. Bell, Brown, Dray, Page, Mr. and Mrs. Parris, Mr. and Mrs. Rennick, Messrs. Rivers, Seyler, G. Standing, Truelove, and Young. Mr. Swaagman was elected treasurer to the League.

Very soon after the formation of the League, another prosecution of Mr. Edward Truelove, bookseller, of High Holborn, took place in the Queen’s Bench on February 1st, 1878. The works he was prosecuted for were quite of the same character as Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy, and were entitled: More Physiology, a most philanthropic pamphlet by Mr. Robert Dale Owen, Senator of the United States, and another pamphlet entitled Individual, Family and National Poverty. Mr. Truelove was most effectually defended by Mr. William Hunter, and the case fell through, as one of the jury considered the book quite moral and philanthropic in its tendencies. The secretary for the “Society for the Suppression of Vice,” Mr. Collette by name, followed up the prosecution, and Mr. Truelove was tried in the Central Criminal Court on May 9th, 1878, and condemned to a fine of fifty pounds and an imprisonment of four months duration, which he underwent. An immense meeting was held in St. James Hall, on the evening of June 6, 1878, to protest against this disgraceful treatment of an honest man like Mr. Truelove, at which the president of the League took the chair, and enthusiastic addresses were delivered by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh.

The trial of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh lasted several days, and aroused a greater interest in the subject than had been known since the days of Malthus. The English Press was full of the subject; scientific congresses gave it their attention; many noted political economists wrote about it; over a hundred petitions were presented to Parliament requesting the freedom of open discussion; meetings of thousands of persons were held in all the large cities; and as result, a strong Neo-Malthusian League was formed in London.

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From the small beginning described in the above article the English work has spread over all the rest of the world. The following is a list of the leagues having membership in the Federation Universelle de la Regeneration Humaine, in which the English organization has always played a leading part:

England (1877).—The Malthusian League. Periodical, The Malthusian.

Holland (1885).—De Nieuw-Malthusiaansche Bond. Secretary, Dr. J. Rutgers, 9 Verhulststraat, Den Haag. Periodical, Het Gellukkig Huisgezin.

Germany (1889).—Sozial Harmonische Verein. Secretary, Herr M. Hausmeister, Stuttgart. Periodical, Die Sozial Harmonie.

France (1895).—Génération Consciente. 27 Rue de la Duée, Paris XX.

Spain (1904).—Liga Española de Regeneración Humana. Secretary, Señor Luis Bulffi, Calle Provenza 177, Pral, la, Barcelona. Periodical, Salud y Fuerza.

Belgium (1906).—Ligue Néo-Malthusienne. Secretary, Dr. Fernand Mascaux, Echevin, Courcelles. Periodical: Génération Consciente, 27 Rue de la Duée, Paris XX.

Switzerland (1908).—Group Malthusien. Secretary, Valentin Grandjean, 106 Rue des Eaux Vives, Geneva. Periodical, La Vie Intime.

Bohemia-Austria (1901).—Zadruhy. Secretary, Michael Kacha, 1164 Zizhov, Prague.

Portugal.—Paz e Liberdade, Revista Anti-Militarista e Neo-Malthusiana. E. Silva, junior, L. da Memória, 46 r/e, Lisbon.

Brazil (1905).—Sección brasileña de propaganda. Secretaries: Manuel Moscosa, Rua de’Bento Pires 29, San Pablo; Antonio Dominiguez, Rua Vizcande de Moranguapez 25, Rio de Janeiro.

Cuba (1907).—Sección de propaganda. Secretary, José Guardiola, Empedrado 14, Havana.

Sweden (1911).—Sallskapet for Humanitar Barnalstring. President: Mr. Hinke Bergegren, Vanadisvagen 15, Stockholm, Va.

Flemish Belgium (1912).—National Verbond ter Regeling van het Kindertal. President, M. L. van Brussel, Rue de Canal, 70, Louvain.

Italy (1913).—Lega Neomalthusiana Italiana. Secretary, Dr. Luigi Berta, Via Lamarmora 22, Turin. Periodical, L’Educazione Sessuale.

Africa.—Ligue Néo-Malthusienne, Maison du Peuple, 10 Rampe Magenta, Alger.

The English organization, with headquarters in London, has for its officers some of the most distinguished men and women in England:

The following are some extracts from the League’s rules:

That the objects of this Society be:—

1. To spread among the people, by all practicable means, a knowledge of the law of population, of its consequences, and of its bearing upon human conduct and morals.

2. To urge upon the medical profession in general, and upon hospitals and public medical authorities in particular, the duty of giving instruction in hygienic contraceptive methods to all married people who desire to limit their families, or who are in any way unfit for parenthood; and to take any other steps which may be considered desirable for the provision of such instruction.

1. “That population (unless consciously and sufficiently controlled) has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence.”

2. That the checks which counteract this tendency are resolvable into positive or life-destroying, and prudential or birth-restricting.

3. That the positive or life-destroying checks comprehend the premature death of children and adults by disease, starvation, war, and infanticide.

4. That the prudential or birth-restricting check consists in the limitation of offspring (1) by abstention from or postponement of marriage, or (2) by prudence after marriage.

5. That prolonged postponement of marriage—as advocated by Malthus—is not only productive of much unhappiness, but is also a potent cause of sexual vice and disease. Early marriage, on the contrary, tends to ensure sexual purity, domestic comfort, social happiness and individual health; but it is a grave social offence for men and women to bring into the world more children than they can adequately house, feed, clothe, and educate.

6. That over-population is the most fruitful source of pauperism, ignorance, crime, and disease.

7. That it is of great importance that those afflicted with hereditary disease, or who are otherwise plainly incapable of producing or rearing physically, intellectually and morally satisfactory children, should not become parents.

8. That the full and open discussion of the Population Question in all its necessary aspects is a matter of vital moment to Society.

It has been the object of this organization during these years to carry on the theoretical propaganda of Birth Control mainly among the educators, consisting of clergymen, physicians, scientists, sociologists, economists and others who in turn would form a strong, reliable public opinion who would force the dissemination of practical information among that element of society who are propagating the diseased and unfit.

It is only within the last few years that this League has begun to distribute information to prevent conception. Thousands of copies of this leaflet have been distributed in nearly every country throughout the civilized world except The United States of America where laws prevent its circulation.

PRACTICAL METHODS OF FAMILY LIMITATION

Notice.—The Council of the Malthusian League, while continuing to regard this as a matter which is strictly within the province of the medical profession, and which ought to be taken over by them, has compiled a leaflet entitled “Hygienic Methods of Family Limitation,” for the benefit of those desirous of limiting their families, but who are ignorant of the means of doing so, and unable to get medical advice on the subject. This leaflet can only be issued, however, to persons over twenty-one years of age who are either married or about to be married, and who declare their conscientious belief that family limitation is justifiable on personal and national grounds. Anyone wishing to obtain a copy of this leaflet must write his or her name and address clearly upon both of the forms of declaration below, and send them to the Hon. Secretary. The sealed leaflet will then be sent them. In order to encourage family limitation among the poorest classes, no charge will be made either for the leaflet or postage, but it is hoped that those who can afford it will enclose stamps for postage or a small donation to help the League in its work.

Under no circumstances whatever can the practical leaflet be supplied without a properly filled up declaration, nor can more than one copy be supplied to the same person. Those wishing to help others, may have additional copies of the declaration form to hand on.

The Malthusian League regrets that it is unable to comply with applications for this leaflet from the United States.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT IN HOLLAND

Interest in the subject did not confine itself to England, for in 1878 at an International Medical Congress in Amsterdam the subject was discussed with great enthusiasm. A paper prepared and read by Mr. S. Van Houten (later Prime Minister) caused a wider interest in the matter and a year later the Neo-Malthusian (or Birth Control) League of Holland was organized. Charles R. Drysdale, then President of the English League, attended the conference.

As is usual in such causes, many of the better educated and intelligent classes adopted the practice at once, as did the better educated workers; but the movement had as yet no interest among the poorest and most ignorant. The League set to work at once to double its efforts in these quarters. Dr. Aletta Jacobs, the first woman physician in Holland, became a member of the League, and established a clinic where she gave information on the means of prevention of conception free to all poor women who applied for it.

All classes, especially the poor, welcomed the knowledge with open arms, and requests came thick and fast for the League’s assistance to obtain the necessary appliances free of charge. The consequence has been that for the past twelve years the League has labored chiefly among the people of the poorest districts. Dr. J. Rutgers and Madame Hoitsema Rutgers, two ardent advocates of these principles, have devoted their lives to this work. Dr. Rutgers says that where this knowledge is taught there is a reciprocal action to be observed: “In families where children are carefully procreated, they are reared carefully; and where they are reared carefully, they are carefully procreated.”

The Neo-Malthusian (or Birth Control) League of Holland has over 7,000 men and women in its membership, and more than fifty nurses whom it indorses.

These nurses are trained and instructed by Dr. Rutgers in the proper means and hygienic principles of the methods of Birth Control. They are established in practice in the various towns and cities throughout Holland. They advise women as to the best method to employ to prevent conception. They work mainly in the agricultural and industrial districts, or are located near them; and their teachings include not only the method of prevention of conception, but instruction in general and sexual hygiene, cleanliness, the uselessness of drugs, and the non-necessity of abortions. (The Council of the Neo-Malthusian or Birth Control League calls attention to the fact that it has for its sole object the Prevention of Conception, and not the causing of abortion.)

The clinic organized by Dr. Jacobs,—the first clinic in the world for the organized dissemination of information on Birth Control,—proved so efficient and beneficial to the standards of the community that others were opened and established until there are now more than fifty in operation.

There is no doubt that the establishment of these clinics is one of the most important parts of the work of a Birth Control League. The written word and written directions are very good, but the fact remains that even the best educated women have very limited knowledge of the construction of their generative organs or their physiology. What, then, can be expected of the less educated women, who have had less advantages and opportunities? It is consequently most desirable that there be practical teaching of the methods to be recommended, and women taught the physiology of their sex organs by those equipped with the knowledge and capable of teaching it.

It stands to the credit of Holland that it is perhaps the only country where the advocates of Birth Control have not been prosecuted or jailed; because the laws regarding the liberty of the individual and the freedom of the press uphold it, and protect its practise.

THE DUTCH NEO-MALTHUSIAN (BIRTH CONTROL) LEAGUE REPORT FOR 1914

Despite the outbreak of war, the progress of the League has been most satisfactory. The membership increased from 5,057 at the beginning of 1914 to 5,521 at the end; and branches now exist in twenty-eight towns in Holland. The list of officers and correspondents alone now occupies four pages of the Report, and comprises nearly two hundred names. As these are of persons in every part in the country, it will be realised how great are the facilities for everyone to obtain practical information. Besides the great amount of advice given by the trained workers, 7,200 copies of the League’s booklet giving practical advice on methods of family limitation (birth control) were supplied. It is instructive to see, in the reports from the various branches open statements that Mrs. X (full name given) helped 149 women and supplied seven gross of preventives, the kinds being clearly specified. The branch reports give particulars of nearly 1,300 women personally instructed in preventive methods by trained workers, but the war prevented the returns from being anything like complete. And this in a country of only six million inhabitants.—The Malthusian, London, July 15, 1915.

There is no doubt that the Neo-Malthusian (Birth Control) League of Holland stands as the foremost in the world in organization, and also as a practical example of the results to be obtained from the teaching of the prevention of conception. Aside from the spreading influence of these ideas in Belgium, Italy, and Germany, Holland presents to the world a statistical record which proves unmistakably what the advocates of Birth Control have claimed for it.

The infantile mortality of Amsterdam and The Hague is the lowest of any cities in the world, while the general death rate and infantile mortality of Holland has fallen to be the lowest of any country in Europe. These statistics also refute the wild sayings of those who shout against Birth Control and claim it means race suicide. On the contrary, Holland proves that the practice of anti-conceptional methods leads to race improvement, for the increase of population has accelerated as the death rate has fallen. There has also been a rapid improvement in the general physique and health of the Dutch people, while that of the high birth rate countries, Russia and Germany, is said to be rapidly deteriorating.

The following figures will suffice to show some of the improvements which have been going on in Holland since 1881, the time the League became actively engaged in the work:—

VITAL STATISTICS OF CHIEF DUTCH TOWNS

Taken from Annual Summary of Marriages, Births, and Deaths in England and Wales, etc., for 1912.^[1]

Amsterdam (Malthusian (Birth Control) League started 1881; Dr. Aletta Jacobs gave advice to poor women, 1885.)
	1881–85	1906–10	1912
Birth Rate	37.1	24.7	23.3	per 1,000 of population
Death Rate	25.1	13.1	11.2	per 1,000 of population
Infantile Mortality: (Deaths in first year)	203	90	64	per thousand living births
The Hague (now headquarters of the Neo-Malthusian (Birth Control) League)
	1881–85	1906–10	1912
Birth Rate	38.7	27.5	23.6	per 1,000 of population
Death Rate	23.3	13.2	10.9	per 1,000 of population
Infantile Mortality: (Deaths in first year)	214	99	66	per thousand living births
Rotterdam.[2]
	1881–85	1906–10	1912
Birth Rate	37.4	32.0	29.0	per 1,000 of population
Death Rate	24.2	13.4	11.3	per 1,000 of population
Infantile Mortality (Deaths in first year)	209	105	79	per thousand living births
Fertility and Illegitimacy Rates.
	1880–2	1890–2	1900–2
Legitimate Fertility	306.4	296.5	252.7	Legitimate birth per 1,000 Married Women aged 15 to 45.
Illegitimate Fertility	16.1	16.3	11.3	Illegitimate births per 1,000 Unmarried Women, aged 15 to 45.
The Hague.
	1880–2	1890–2	1900–2
Legitimate Fertility	346.5	303.9	255.0
Illegitimate Fertility	13.4	13.6	7.7
Rotterdam.
	1880–2	1890–2	1900–2
Legitimate Fertility	331.4	312.0	299.0
Illegitimate Fertility	17.4	16.5	13.1