Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell

by Margaret Sanger; Winter Russell

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.