Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell

by Margaret Sanger; Winter Russell

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.