Part 2

Not long ago we took a syphilitic woman to 43 hospitals in the city and every one of them said, “We will cure her disease. Leave her here. We will do the best we can for her, but don’t ask us to give her the information to control birth. That is not our office. That is not for us,” and so that little syphilitic woman went back again to her home and will become pregnant only to abort again, which was a great kindness.

Nature sometimes brings the syphilitic to birth before their full time, or brings them dead. In other states of syphilis, that is not so, and we have feeble-minded as well as insane. We have 400,000 feeble-minded people in the United States that any authority on the subject would say to you “Not one of them should have been born.” They never should have been born and sometimes these parents are perfectly normal, and yet this taint has gone through the blood and has left this perfectly normal physical person who arrives at the adult age with all its physical functions, and yet it has the mentality of a child eight years of age. The feeble-minded man or woman is of no use to itself or society, and it would be better if we were living in a real civilization that they should not have been born. Only 40,000 of this 400,000 are entered in institutions and the others are living among us, producing and reproducing their progeny and providing abundant material and opportunity for the continuance of charities and other institutions for ages and generations more to come.

We found also in one institution—a so-called reformatory where they take the girls of the underworld—prostitutes—in Geneva, Ill., they find that 50 percent of these girls coming into the underworld—the prostitutes—was of this cause, that she belonged to the feeble-minded, and again we find that 89 percent of these came from large families.

You can’t get away from it, my friend. Large families and poverty and misery go hand in hand. Now what do we try to do for all these conditions? How do we look out upon them? We are in a track. Motherhood has been tracked. We find that most of the social agencies of the country are trying to legislate these things out of existence. That is all. They run off to Albany and to Washington and they make eight-hour laws for women in industry, but they never think of the poor mother in the home who might have eight hours. Can you think of the mother in the home with eight hours? She has to go out of the home, out into industry to be protected by the law. Do you realize that mothers and women never have a night’s rest from the time that they are pregnant, some of them until the door of nature closes their maternal functions? They never know what it is to have one whole night’s rest. They are up nights with babies. Is this freedom or liberty? Hasn’t she a right to herself—hasn’t she a duty to herself to say when and under what conditions she shall be a mother?

We try to reduce our infant mortality rate by our milk stations and all of the other things going on today. Thousands and thousands of dollars are spent for this condition, and to a certain degree some of it is taken care of but it does not get at the root. When we come to maternal mortality we find also huge funds that are spent in nurses going into the homes of the poor, telling the mother of eight children how to have her ninth. (Laughter.) Most of us know that that mother wants to know how not to have her tenth. That is the welcome assistance that they can give that woman, but that will be the last stone to be turned.

Also our child labor—we make laws in Washington against child labor, hoping we will wipe that out of existence. For 50 years they have been trying to wipe child labor off the books in the United States, but they have not succeeded and they will never succeed until they establish birth control clinics in those districts where these women are, where they put in birth control clinics, like they have in Holland—in every industrial section in the United States where women can come to trained nurses and physicians and get from them scientific information whereby they may control birth.

Now we look upon all these things just about in the same way. We try to palliate most all of them. Take one instance—our immigration laws. The United States Government makes the most rigid laws. It scans over the vessels carefully to see that no one should enter who is an idiot, who is insane, and who is a pauper. They see to it that anyone who enters is not an idiot, is not insane and is not a pauper. They make those rigid laws and rules for those who shall come in, but after you are once on the inside, you can produce and reproduce and repopulate the earth with syphilitic and diseased and insane people as far as the government is concerned. This is the short-sighted side of our whole life. We are very generous and sympathetic but we are oversentimental, and the time has come to use our minds and to apply our intelligence to life and to the conditions of life as we find them today.

Now Mr. Russell has said some things that are very interesting to me. He tells us that we cannot have pleasure without pain. It is a man who is speaking. (Laughter and applause.) It is very peculiar that Nature only works on the one side of the human family when it comes to that law. She applies all the pain to the woman. It is absurd—a perfectly absurd argument in the face of rational intelligence (applause) to talk about marriage being for one purpose.

Now I claim—and I differ with Mr. Russell on that—I claim that the sex relationship has distinctly two functions. It has its love function and it has its maternal and paternal function. One is quite independent of the other, and one is just as moral as the other, and if it were not so, then the laws of this country ought to divorce the woman who is not able to have children. Absolutely! And we know it does not. We know that the time the children are created that there is not 1 percent of humanity that is born or created with that thought in mind. Very few people think at the time of creation that they are going to create. Most of us are brought into the world by accident and that is exactly what birth control is going to change. That is going to make humanity a conscious and voluntary thing.

When we talk of race suicide, it would take almost a whole afternoon to tell you how futile that argument is. We know perfectly well, those of us who have studied the question that in those countries where birth control knowledge has been at the disposal of the people that, although the birth rate has gone down, that the death rate has also gone down. Consequently the population has been accelerated and there has been a better population because it has been a better and healthier population. If Mr. Russell wants to talk about the race and does not want race suicide he had better come over quickly to the ranks of birth control. (Applause.)

Winter Russell SECOND SPEECH

Mr. Russell: May I say at the outset that I did not say we could not have pleasure without pain. I said we could not have pleasure without paying for it and the man has to pay. (Laughter.) I, too, am concerned with the matter of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have been trying to find out the truth about that from the very first time that I began to think, and that is what I want to find out, and I devoutly pray right now that if Mrs. Sanger has got the truth that it will prevail, but I want to know the truth and I feel still that the truth is not there.

I am going to concern myself entirely with refutation now. I am going to speak a little more about the positive side of this. I would say that Mrs. Sanger has done quite a little for me in pointing out that there are these two groups she sees all of the time—these families with large numbers of children. I hope that I do not miss sight of them entirely. I may not know them directly or as intimately as Mrs. Sanger, but Mrs. Russell has been in 1,500 of the homes reported to be in dire straits and destitution. I have been living with her as her husband during the time that she visited those homes. And I feel that through her report I know something of those homes as well. I see the other homes of the small families, but I am frank to say that I do think in a far different line than Mrs. Sanger. She says that the large family is the family of poverty and of misery; very often, though not always nor in so large a measure as is generally expected, is it the family of poverty and by no means is it the family of misery. I have seen the misery beyond words in the small family. I know that my mother considered—and she had three children—that her life was a long tragedy. There was never a day that she waited for food or clothes or a fine home, but practically all of her talk was like the story of a great tragedy. My sister has a husband that has now an income of $70,000 a year. She has never known what it was to want for food or clothes or a fine home, and I heard her say not very long ago that she had never known what happiness on this earth is. Mrs. Sanger sees poverty, she sees misery and she sees unwanted children. To be sure, there are many thousands of these homes where, sad to say, the children are unwanted, but they have made this devout prayer to God, I believe, for children, and they have gotten them. They have gotten what I believe to be the greatest wealth and treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven that there is on the face of the earth, and when they get that, they have to pay for it. They have to pay and take the responsibility.

To my mind, these snickers and giggles is one of the most tragic things on the face of the earth. It shows you haven’t got eyes that see. You have neither ears that hear, and you haven’t got the heart that feels. (Chairman calls for more respectful attention on the part of the audience.)

Furthermore, there are not as many as she feels that are unwanted. Many in these homes are glad that they are numerous. And yet she says these small families that she sees are all wanted. I happen to know that in those small families, as she sees them, there is almost as large a percentage of these one, two or three or sometimes four kinds [sic] that are not wanted. It has become an exception. She has not become as scientific as she ought to be.

She says she sees misery in large families. I do not see so much happiness. She says that she sees congestion and infant mortality. A large percentage of that was due to pure ignorance. My father was a physician, and in that town that I am going to talk about—she says I know nothing of the race suicide and I will show you that I do—in this town of small families, there was infant mortality. My sister and I were on the bed, at the door of death, for weeks because we had a terrible disease. My father was a physician. We know that that disease has no terror whatever for people who know how properly to treat and feed children. There is a difference in knowledge between that day and this, and much of the infant mortality is due to the lack of education.

Then she says in these days there is not so much infant mortality. There is a place—she finds here in the small family, crime. I grant that there is a lot of crime. They have filled a large percentage of our prisons, but I will have you remember that in those homes that are small I believe that there is a vastly greater number of criminals, not only those who have enough knowledge to keep within the law but those who belong in the penitentiaries, but they are keen enough and they are shrewd enough to keep without the law and escape it.

The Lockwood Committee does not prosecute these profiteers, these robbers and pirates who belong in the penitentiary, but just the same as they think they can cheat nature by having a small family—that greed that makes them criminals that do escape the law—I hold with Emerson that they pay. They may not pay in a penitentiary but they pay.

Then she says that here is where we get our prostitution. Yes, again she is right; a large number of the poor and unfortunate girls who walk the streets do come from these homes. For every girl who walks the street in that condition—I believe there are 100 who have a wedding certificate and who live in a home—they are worse than prostitutes (applause)—they want somebody to be their meal ticket. They want somebody that will support them. They want respectability. They want all the joy that they haven’t got. You men have to pay and you assume the responsibility. Before these poor girls upon the street I take off my hat and before these I can’t express my detestation. (Applause.)

Then, just think of the logic of her position. Oh, there are some beasts in the marriage tie and they can’t be self-controlled. What is the logic of it all? Is she going to have the young people filled up with this knowledge and are people of her kind going to have full sway over their lives—over their life of sacrifice and consecration to the welfare of humanity—over those going through life single and should they have compulsory marriage because they don’t have the joys of marriage? If she says that they suffer the physicians will tell you it is because they don’t have children, and if they do suffer, it is because they have to pay that penalty.

Of all of the sickly stuff I ever heard of is this matter of tuberculosis and heart disease and kidney trouble. If a man has got a wife that has tuberculosis and heart disease and kidney trouble, and he is such a beast that he can’t control himself and can’t consecrate himself to the sick wife, the law should step in. Should we say that we will surrender her to this beast? Half of them do not know the law of health and development, and strength and energy comes from that very law of self-control.

Then this matter of child labor. Why of course I would protect and we are protecting them in other States, and we are looking after it. But it is better to have these children born, terrible as it is, than not to have any children at all.

Then they say that this matter of venereal disease—Good Lord—apparently she wants to give them a certificate of an endless playground for the rest of their lives. Feeble-minded, of course the law should step in there and devote a little intelligence to prevent this crime from going on.

Now as to this matter of health—in the first place—we know that the children are not being born. The statisticians of every life insurance company in the entire United States are pointing out that the American stock of today is dying out, that they are not being born, and then this matter of the children that are born. Let us begin with them. Why, a boy or girl that is born in a family of one or two, in the first place, loses about one-tenth of a natural life because it has not the association with children that it should have. I know one child in a family that had quite a number of friends and their selfish and natural attitude is “none of this one child stuff for me.” Those kids will grow up and become nothing—those one or two children in a small family are worthless. I will give you the facts.

They talk about going to colleges and universities. We are manacled today by the fetishes of paper respectability. I have seen a lot of these patriots. My grandfather’s mother had 13 children in a log cabin, and I don’t think any of them died young. They all lived to a good old age. That old patriot—he never saw the inside of a college, but he knew more than half the graduates of Yale and Harvard. He knew the facts of life.

This matter of the physical side of it. You cannot divorce them. I don’t care. I won’t discuss authorities. I don’t care if Mrs. Sanger should bring every medical authority there is, for I can get as many as she can. Take a case that comes up in court. Some man says the defendant is very insane. Another gets up—an expert—and he says the defendant is not insane at all. Everybody that she can get to say that it is not harmful—I can get someone to say that it is. They go into the laboratory and prove that the act is harmless, but they can’t get into the mind and heart, and the mind and heart have more to do with the well being from the physical point of view than anything you can possibly conceive of. I was brought up in New England and in that section of the country every housewife is a nervous wreck and nearly everybody knows why.

Audience: Why?

Mr. Russell: Mrs. Sanger can tell why. From the mental point of view, I grant you here that it is difficult to measure the kind, but this mental development is an arrested development. Do you know every father and mother I believe are subjected to this arrested development? That is why we haven’t more energy and vibrating health and strength in America today. Why do we have this apathy and sluggishness in American life? It is because of these thousands of arrested developments of these people that want one or two children.

These mothers think that they are entitled to the whole world. Talk about 2.75 percent beer. These mothers are not even 10 percent mothers, then of all the misrepresentations and tears these mothers pour over this one child—it makes me sick. (Laughter.) The ghastly thing is that they have but that one child. The sad part of it is that we are not all gifted with an imagination. Think what they are devoutly praying for—that is the tragedy—just think when they get that one life or two, and then when they begin to plan and contrive, and sacrifice themselves—then if Fate or destiny cruelly takes that one child—what greater tragedy is there in this world?

I have seen broken fathers and mothers who have said that life is dead when that only child or that only daughter has been taken from them. One of the saddest cases I have ever seen in my life happened a few days ago when a mother recently buried her husband—and a few years later buried her only son, and then her daughter, who had risen to the very pinnacle of fame here in the city of New York, after one year of existence was stricken down. A greater tragedy you could not picture than that. Consider this, that for every one that is lost, how many are there that they have not brought forth into the world? They don’t know what they have missed and what they have lost. That to my mind is the greatest tragedy of all, the spiritual side of it.

Now let me submit you a little about the practical side of it. Mrs. Sanger says that I am theoretical, that I deal with the Bible. I do not care whether or not the Bible has said it. It wasn’t that that makes me take this attitude. This is the situation.

We have birth control in America today. The only thing is this—except for two or three groups that to my mind are the very heart and soul of America and upon which it relies—we have birth control in America. We have birth control and Mrs. Sanger and the rest of her kind would talk to the fresh, wholesome people that are coming over who are the hope of America—she would come to them and not wait as we do make them wait in order to become citizens. We say “you cannot be citizens until you have a few years.” She would say, “We will hand you this purely American doctrine of birth control and you can have that right off.”

I have an opportunity of seeing this through the years. I am going to give you a picture of the block in which I was born and brought up, that I have watched for 30 years. Thirty years ago I began to watch the block. There were 17 families, 34 people at the start; 34 people who were successful, they believe, in this little town of 3,500 people. It had a fine school, a State Normal School—one of the foremost in the State. It had a Boys’ School known nationally, if not internationally, and they were 34 people in 17 homes.

All were successful and owned their own homes with well-kept lawns and they were thoroughly American. They believed that they were well educated people and that they were successful.

Now, take them house by house. The first family was a merchant. They had one child, a girl, and “Oh, what a girl was Mary.” She was a singer. There, Mrs. Sanger says, Nature was kind. She was a singer and she yodeled and warbled over the country and then her parents thought that Mary was going to be a great singer. No, she did not become one. She married the station agent. The station agent did not find that there was much rhythm in music in the home as there was in Mary’s voice and he went out, and finally he stayed out altogether. He walked in front of the locomotive and that was the finish of him. Mary lives today in a little boarding house. That family is extinct. Mary is still living on. That family is gone.

In the next house, there was a man who was a kind of good-for-nothing fellow. I suppose the town said he came from far away and that he was a boomer, but he had a wondrous wife. This wife wasn’t educated, but she had the most phenomenal energy. She could wash 23 hours a day and she did. They had three children and she, as Mrs. Sanger has said, she wanted them to be brought up decent. The boy was sent to Harvard, by this 23 hours a day wash. It was a fine home. The boy went to Harvard and became a good-for-nothing, and went out West.

There was another daughter married. She had a son, too, who died. She married a man in Vermont. They never had children and never will.

The third daughter married. She was a painter. She painted canvasses. The station agent after an alarming career of drunkenness, died. He was respectable. He was a federal official, but he died. And she will never have children.

There is one child from that family. In the next house was the superintendent of the state Normal College; two children, one boy, who after a career, he married. The other is an old maid.

The next house was a physician. His first wife went insane. He had a beastly temper. I don’t know whether it was birth control that did it. There was one daughter. She had several marriages but no children. Then she married again. That second wife went to the insane asylum. One child died before it was of marriageable age.

In the next house was a man who had two children, and they never had grandchildren. In the next house was a veteran of the Civil War who spent most of his pension money on drink. He had two sons, one of whom was married and his wife died in familiar circumstances. I suppose she was not quite well informed. There was one child. The other boy from that family—he is looked upon as uncommon and vulgar because he has four children. Then this next house, there was a man who had several farms. They had three children. One of them was an old maid. The second girl married after several years. She died. There is one child from the third. In that next house was one of my uncles. He died, too, leaving two children, but they never lived and there is no grandchildren from them.

Crossing on the other side of the street, another physician. They had a son who went to college. He has become a druggist in Vermont, married 20 years and no children.

That family is extinct. In the next house was another physician. He died at the age of 45. His wife had no children. His wife was the champion bon-bon eater. In the next house there was a boy and a girl. She married a drunkard. He was a dentist. No children. The brother is out West, and I believe there are two children there. In the next house, there was a son and daughter. The daughter married the cashier of the savings bank. No children; 25 years married. The son did not learn birth control quick enough. They had a child before they were married. (Laughter.) His mother took him and sent him out on a farm and she taught him, and they only have had one since.