Debate on Birth Control

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 31intimately 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 32sees 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 33she 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 34law 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.)

35Then, 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.

36Then 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 37will 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 38with 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 39what 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 40care 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 41had 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 42a 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 43marriages 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 44died 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.

Then came my father’s house. I have one sister and one brother. My sister has three children and my brother four, and I have four. (Applause.) There are eleven grandchildren. Within the next house, there is a merchant living with his wife and they both tended store. They wanted to be so decent and accumulate a lot of property. They became the crankiest individuals and when he died, his wife said he was the handsomest looking corpse she had ever seen. It is extinct. No children whatever.

There is another that lived in that house, and they had one child. Out of those 17 families, nine are extinct. 45Nine are dead and gone. They have passed away. Is that race suicide? Out of eight who remain, out of the 34 people, out of these eight families, there are 26 grandchildren. My father’s family produced 12 of the 26. Out of 33 of the families, there are 14 grandchildren if you except mine. I think I am an exception. There is race suicide. Don’t tell me that that is one exceptional block. I can duplicate that block on every street in that town except one blessed community, Little Canada. They were not Americans. They were vulgar. They were poor. They want big families, but from these poor families in Little Canada, there have come the French Canadians. From them come doctors, lawyers, and teachers, and they are inheriting the town. There is race suicide.

I can duplicate that block in practically every American city in this country. I can duplicate that block in every apartment house on the west side.

America is dying today—the America that we know. I wish that it were not. I wish that it could get a cleaner and better ideal, but it hasn’t got it. That is the tragedy of it all.

Now, that is what we have got to consider, whether we are going to do 46that or not. I have no worry what ever and life has no worry. It does not matter what you prove, the inexorable law goes on. “Those who do shall inherit the earth. They shall have life unto the end and the others shall be extinct.”

I come from college—Harvard. I believe that the average production of college graduates in America is three-quarters of a life. That is statistically and literally true. (Applause)

Margaret Sanger SECOND SPEECH

Mrs. Sanger: There is no doubt there are many ways of race suicide but Mr. Russell has not proven to me yet that birth control is causing it. He has shown us—given us the number of inhabitants in a block which, according to his ideas, are dying out. Those who have had no children—there is no reason to claim or to know just what is the cause of those people not having children. Many barren women today might be desirous of having children, and they go through serious operations in order to have children, and because sometimes of an infection given to her by her husband, she is unable to bear children.

Furthermore, for every block that Mr. Russell can produce in New York City, where they are controlling their numbers and where they are not having the numbers sufficient to his satisfaction I can show you an equal number who are overdoing themselves. (Applause.) I can give him one block in New York City where there are 10,000 people, and but one airshaft 48between them. They are living huddled together practically like animals and he will ask these people still to produce numbers to a greater extent than they have.

When we talk about race suicide it seems to me that there are other things that one must consider. Birth control will improve the quality of the race, and unless we do improve the quality of the race, it is better that we do have race suicide. (Applause.) Certainly all of us who have lived within the past five years and have seen what has gone on in the world—we have seen the destruction of life—we have seen it so mercilessly taken—certainly, there are other ways that race suicide is being put out upon the world other than birth control. War certainly has done something to wipe out the inhabitants of the earth. And if you go to Europe where I have been the last six months or so and see the condition of misery and unhappiness that is going on there, particularly in Central Europe, you would say that death would be a blessing to these people, instead of the hand of peace that has come to them. When I saw more than 15,000 little children in Germany that were born since the war, friends, brought into being in 49the most terrible conditions that any country could be in—those children were brought to birth because they, too, did not believe in birth control. They believe in numbers, in expansion, in more and more children, and today, those hundreds and hundreds of children have no backbone. They are almost unable to hold up their heads. They will be absolutely useless for another generation. Are these the kind of children we want to bring into the world? Don’t we want quality instead of quantity?

It seems to me it is time we used our intelligence and stopped the ranting phrases that we have been hearing so many of today. (Applause.)

Again I say, Mr. Russell tells us that he was quite sick when he heard me tell about women who had tuberculosis and heart disease and other ailments, and should have been prevented from becoming pregnant. He said the man who did not have self-control was not worth much. I wonder if Mr. Russell knows—he is a lawyer, and I wonder if he knows what the laws of this state are as far as you men are concerned. The Bible states “Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands.” It is one of the things put into our laws, and the woman who does not submit to her 50husband—he does not have to support her. I wonder if Mr. Russell knows that. I have myself had cases where women have come to me and said: “What shall I do? I have left this man. I can’t have more children.” And when she comes to court the judge has said: “Are you willing to live with this man or not?” And she said: “I can’t have more children. I don’t want more children.” And the judge said: “You must adjust this matter for yourselves.” The man did not have to support her unless she submitted her body to him. That is the condition today.

We talk about self-control. I think none of us who look on the world know there is self-control. No one delves in self-control. That is one of the finest human instincts there is. When you see hungry people going around with plenty of food in front of them, I think there is self-control in the world. (Applause.)

And don’t forget that this self-control—and I would like to ask anyone to contradict it that a man and woman may be ever so self-controlled and if they are married and live in marriage relationship—that it only means one embrace or one union to have a baby every year. The most self-controlled man and woman in the 51world can still have a family that that man can’t take care of. That is something to remember.

On the other hand, if we mean, and if Mr. Russell would only talk so that we can understand him—plainly—I have to tell you what he means as a matter of fact. If Mr. Russell means that this relationship between man and woman should only be for procreation, then that is another matter. I wish he would say so. If it means you are going to have two children, then only two times in your life you should have union—that’s another question. But our marriage laws are not based on that law. And it would have to be a strict understanding before a woman married, before that union or that companionship or relationship could take place. I have no objection whatsoever to any individuals who wish to live that way.

But I am speaking for the millions of women who are crushed with over child-bearing, whose lives are broken and who have become drudges in the family today. I am speaking for mothers and the individual here, and there does not concern me in the least. They may be an exception, but I know there are millions and millions of women who are married, who are just as self-controlled as anyone 52Mr. Russell can show us, who are living in terror of pregnancy, but they have men who are just as good to them. Men are not all beasts. These people give you an idea that men are a lustful, beastly creature, looking to violate some woman’s virtue. I wonder why a man does not stand up against that. They never do. It takes a woman to stand up for them. I know that most of the women that I have lived with—their husbands are men who are just as considerate and decent as anyone you can find. They are trapped in ignorance. That is what is the matter.

Our whole sexual education has been at fault. We have been kept in blinders. We have been taught that this relationship is a vital, terrible thing—put it out of your hearts. However a marriage certificate is placed in your hands and Presto! everything is supposed to be made beautiful. (Applause and laughter.)

Our married life and happiness depends upon an attitude and an ideal attitude towards our relation, and we are not going to get it by blindness and by ignorance. We are going to get it by adjusting our own interests and our own intelligence to life as it is today, and I claim that any man living on the average workingman’s 53wage today is not able to support some two or three children decently. There may be exceptions to that, but we have more than—I think it is something like 40,000 or 50,000 people in this country who are living and dependent upon public charity, and every time a man and woman does not have the conscious responsibility toward the children that they are going to bring into being, and have them according to Nature, as Mr. Russell would say, without regard to their protection, to preparing for their coming—that just as sure as we do that—the man’s wage to do is unable to keep up with his reproductive power. That has been the history of labor all the way down, and the man and woman who brings to birth children that they can’t take care of, it means you are going to pass that burden and the responsibility upon some one else. We have today in China this terrible poverty that is going on there. Thirty millions of people in China are starving to death. The Chinese have always lived according to Mr. Russell’s theory, and they are appealing now to low birth rate countries, to those who have as a nation used birth control; they are appealing to them now to save some other millions 54of others in China and we have to do it.

The responsibility always comes back upon those who have protected themselves, those who have lived within their own means, and according to their own intelligence.

I am not going to take up all the time I have been allotted because I am quite through. I want to say in the first place birth control joins the fight against the transmission of venereal disease to the next generation. Birth control is the pivot around which every movement must swing making for race betterment. Birth control does not act as a substitute for any social scheme or other ideal system. But it must be the base and serve them as a foundation.

Birth control will free the mother from the trap of pregnancy. It will save the child from that procession of coffins, as well as from the toil of mill and factory.

Birth control will make parenthood a voluntary function instead of an accident as it is today. When motherhood and childhood is free, we then can go hand in hand with the emancipation of the human race. (Applause.)

Winter Russell THIRD SPEECH

Mr. Russell: May I say that if Mrs. Sanger does not know what the cause of no children in Farmington was, I do. Everybody in that town knew. It was because they had made up their minds that they were not going to do that and they did not have them.

That is one of the great troubles with this volunteer parenthood—it is that there are so very few volunteers. Mrs. Sanger and I agree upon this matter of education. She would not say to those who are trying to find the ready path to health—those who are afflicted with tuberculosis and venereal disease—that they can reach this road to health by self control. She says that we will educate you and the feeble-minded about the most delicate, intricate complications, and disseminate information and literature that we have on the human body. She thinks she can take the millions of people and, as a matter of cold fact, introduce this knowledge. A large percentage of these millions of abortions are due to the fact that they 56thought they knew all about it and they didn’t. And Mrs. Sanger has pointed out that here still is a lot of laboratory experiments and research work that has got to be done before they will be absolutely, scientifically sure that they will know just exactly what they are doing.

I would have them educated, and I would have Mrs. Sanger and all the rest of them change their views in this connection because of education. I agree with her absolutely with this. We are handing a marriage certificate to those who are not prepared to have it. We make a man who is going to run a steam engine or an automobile or prepare teeth—he has to have a license. We ought to know about this matter of rearing children. We ought to have education but it ought to be the education that will give us the key to self-control and teach us how to take care of the children after they have come.

And then this matter of the difficulty of self-control. If these people that have the one or two or three children would take them with joy and thanksgiving and devote themselves to the higher mental and spiritual development that ought to come with them, and would have come if they had been properly educated, the 57matter of self-control would be a very simple matter indeed.

Oh, this matter of quality. We are misled on this matter of quality—this matter of accomplishments. I don’t know how I can possibly impress this any better than this. I believe that a woman who comes into Ellis Island and can neither read nor write, and has seven to eight children, is worth more to the United States of America than a graduate of Vassar University. I will go further. I say this that if I had not been blessed with a wife and mother such as Mrs. Russell is, that I would choose for a wife today—I would rather have a girl that cooks and can’t read nor write, who loves children, than some of these graduates with accomplishments.

We have four sons, and I hope and I pray that instead of getting as a wife an educated rag and a bone and a hank of hair with accomplishments, that they will get some of these women that want and love a big family of children. I believe that their life will be richer, nobler, and fuller. I have a daughter. I hope and devoutly pray that instead of any person who is so utterly absorbed in this volunteer practice and they think that after some years that they will have one or two children—I would 58not say a common working man—I would say a divine working man—I would rather she have one of those and have a big family of children, rather than she should have one of the other kind.

Little Canada with its families has given a better quality of children to that town and country than any other place. They call for statistics of volunteer countries. They don’t realize it that there are great segments of humanity that have it as a fundamental part of their life—this matter of sacred relations. When you come to think that there is not one single phase in life, one single place that you can be frivolous with this sacred function, that it does not rebound and makes you repay and takes its penalty—you pay the penalty. They have tried to take the sweet without the responsibility. They have thought that they could scheme with this sacred thing and strike a balance book with nature.

As a matter of fact in China, I was reading the other night, two or three of the great political economists, they say there is not a single case in the history of the world where there has been starving because of the number of people. The future of 59the race belongs to those that have the numbers.

Then they say it is due to the war and the explosive populations. It is just ourselves, Germany, France and Italy, who have been practising this thing for years, the big material nations of the world, that are to blame. Those nations that are true to life are going to inherit the earth. It is inexorable in the way in which it works out.

As I look at America today, I see it in the grip of a foul monster. It was as though we have been gassed. I consider these teachings as mental and spiritual dope. Morphine and heroin don’t compare with the way in which we are duped today. It speaks in all of our literature and customs. When you see a woman in a pregnant condition today, you see smirks and snubs as though it was a misfortune to that poor woman. We are today in the grip of a foul monster. It speaks in our literature.

Take the intellectual life of America today. Greenwich Village thinks it is intellectual. It is the intellectual sewage disposal plant of America today, and it is not very scientific. It is a fact. Fifth Avenue and the west side where I live—it is the social garbage dumping grounds of the 60United States of America. All these people that think that they have to be decent and have the freedom and liberty—freedom to be foul, freedom to be disgusting—if there is anything that annoys me and my nerves is this puking pus that is called love poured forth over the poodle dog by some volunteer married person today.

As a matter of fact, a large family is the hope of the world. It is the greatest disciplinary force that there is in life. There is nothing that so develops the mind and soul of man and the woman as bringing up a great family of children. These disciplinary forces we are losing today and that is because we are following the easiest way. We are taking the course of the least resistance. You are trying to get the honey and escape the thorns, and it can’t be done.

Oh, these people. If Mrs. Sanger were true in this matter—then why is it that the great mass of people—the down and outers, are single men, and a good many of them, single women? It is because they haven’t control to get the skill that is necessary and there is always that condition. We find that by self-control one can lead a life of singleness. We find that self-control gives them influence and power. 61School teachers, priests and nuns—those people that have a tremendous influence, practice self-control—they think they can obtain the pleasure without paying for it.

Now, the individual is really unimportant. If you look at life itself and what you are trying to do, it is the race that is going to produce. It is the race of the past that has made it possible for us to be here today. And only as we measure up to this tremendous responsibility does the race of tomorrow depend. I cannot give you all that I would like to give you—a vision. But I believe that in these great unborn numbers is really—there is the real resources of America. Why, we have resources ample. We could all move into Texas and it would not be as crowded as Belgium was before the war began. This matter of food and clothes—we haven’t begun to touch the resources.

About that little town in Maine, rotten to the core with its birth control, there are hundreds of depleted farms that used to support families of ten and twelve children, and do that well, too.

That is where the future lies in the great unborn, in the heart, and in the soul. The psychologists say we use but 10 percent of the brains we have 62and we are using a small percentage of the spiritual and moral resources we have, and we can do it if we live up to this responsibility that we ought to incur.

I believe that in every mind and heart there is faith and love that would make life glorious and glad indeed, and I wish I could give you the vision of that. I have sought for ambition, fame, power, and I would like to write a great song, but I know I could never begin to express the music and joy of a great home, of a fine pure home.

I would like to paint a great picture, but I know I could never begin to depict the color and composition that there is in a little daughter or son’s face.

I would like to have a great piece of sculpture as my work, but I know that I could never begin to express the beauty and form of a little loving child in a home.

I would like to write a great novel but I know I could not for one moment begin to give the comedy and the tragedy, the romance, and the thrill that there is in the home group of little children.

And I would like to write a great play, but I know that I could not begin 63to give the drama, the comedy and the tragedy that there is in bringing up a little family.

I believe that the great mass of so-called Americans are today voluntarily but blindly shutting the unborn out from the Heavens to which I hope we will all ultimately reach. I thank you for your courtesy and consideration. (Applause.)

Mr. Gould: May I announce that the real and practical decision of this debate will be rendered by the New York State Legislature when they take up the problem of whether or not birth control should be made public knowledge? I thank you.