The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts

by Margaret Sanger

[51]. Read before the conference of the Massachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene, Boston, November 19, 1915.

From the standpoint of the child, something can be done to make them a little happier; from the standpoint of society, no amount of mental hygiene can ever render them efficient citizens. Society can, by proper treatment, render them less of a menace than they are naturally, and the ills that we now suffer on account of them can be largely reduced.

It is estimated that there are from 300,000 to 400,000 mental defectives in the United States. That is based upon the United States census of 1890, in which the question was asked “Whether defective in mind, sight, hearing or speech, or whether crippled, maimed or deformed, with name of defect.” Now if anyone can estimate what proportion of the true number of the feeble-minded would be returned in answer to that question, he will be able to estimate how near the truth is the 200,000 which the census report gives. Three hundred thousand or 400,000 seems to be a conservative estimate.

I am to discuss this topic from the standpoint of heredity. It has not yet been successfully contradicted that two-thirds of this army of 300,000 or 400,000, owe their condition to heredity. A quarter of a million of these people are feeble-minded because their ancestors were feeble-minded. They have inherited the condition just as you have inherited the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, and the shape of your head. There is a tendency in these days to attribute a great deal to heredity. But of this particular thing there seems to be no question. The menace of the problem comes, not from the fact that a quarter of a million inherited their condition, but because they are transmitting that condition to their offspring. Of that quarter of a million feeble-minded persons in the United States, do you know how many are being cared for, guarded and kept from propagating their kind? About 24,000 out of 250,000 are to-day being cared for in such institutions as you have here at Waverley. The rest are living their lives, are raising families, and providing abundant opportunity for the exercise of the charitable impulses of numberless generations to come. And that condition of things is getting worse rather than better.

What shall we do? There have been two answers. Some say, “Segregate, shut them up. Keep the sexes apart.” We are told that if we could do this for a generation our problem would be largely solved. The two-thirds in which the condition is largely hereditary would be eliminated. I want to assure you that the problem is larger than that. In the first place, looked at from the practical standpoint, we do not seem to be able to segregate. We are taking care of 24,000, and there are at least 250,000 to be cared for. If the State of New York cared for its estimated proportion of mental defectives, it would require thirty institutions of 1,000 each. They find it hard to raise money for the three or four institutions they now have. Their appropriations are cut every year. In the State of Massachusetts there are at least 14,000 feeble-minded persons. It would require ten institutions the size of Waverley,—a demand upon the public treasury which we are not willing to meet. I have not found anyone yet who is optimistic enough to think that we shall meet the demand within any reasonable length of time,—a time so short that we can safely rely upon that as a solution of the problem.

I have said that this quarter of a million, this army of feeble-minded people, are propagating. They are propagating a progeny of feeble-minded at somewhere from two to six times as fast as the intelligent people are propagating their kind. That is another serious part of the problem. I should like to digress from my particular field for a moment to make a suggestion on the other side. It makes one feel pessimistic when we find that the good stock here in New England—the stock than which there is no better in the world—is gradually disappearing for lack of issue. Of one family after another one reads all too frequently, “The last of his family has passed away.” We are told sometimes that two children in a family are all that can be properly reared; that it is better to rear two children and rear them properly than to rear a larger family and rear them badly. If two children in a family are all that our best and finest and nobler families can properly raise, how many children ought to be raised in a family of these low-grade people? The average in the United States is, for all classes, something less than two, and the average for these defectives is from four to twelve. In that little family that we ran across down in New Jersey, which we call the Kallikaks, you will recall that the good side started from six ancestors. That is to say, Old Martin Kallikak, after he married, had seven children, one of whom died without marrying. From the six who lived and married, sprang all the normal descendants. Martin’s illegitimate son, the child of the feeble-minded girl, was the only one on the bad side, and yet to-day the number of descendants from the illegitimate mating is practically the same as the number descended from the six legitimate children. You can see that it does not take many generations for the progeny of the unrestrained feeble-minded to equal and even outstrip the normal. Our good stock is multiplying very slowly. Our poor stock—the lowest strata of society—multiplies in what might really be called a brutal ratio. If civilization is to advance, our best people must replenish the earth. I think it should be a part of our religion to replenish the world with good, clean people.

We need to know vastly more than we know to-day before we can give definite answers, except in the case of marriage between two feeble-minded persons. Now, that being the case, the argument that I want to make to you is: the propagation of the feeble-minded is going on at an enormous rate. If we could do, and if we did, everything that we wanted to do, and that we knew enough to do, we should be getting only at the surface of the problem, and should be sure in only about one case out of the six possibilities. Now if that is the case, my friends, does it seem that we ought to put off attacking the problem until we cannot stand it any longer? Or does it mean that we had better attack it right away? Is it not best to begin hunting for these defective children wherever they may be found? And they can be found in the school, in our juvenile courts, in our almshouses, in our insane hospitals, in our reform schools, in our homes for cripples, in our asylums for the blind,—in short, wherever there is a dependent group there is an undue proportion of these mental defectives.

Some will say, “If they are in almshouses they are being cared for.” In reality they are being raised and brought to manhood and womanhood and then sent out, to propagate their kind. Fifty years ago the problem was not as serious as it is to-day, because these defectives were out in the world by themselves, getting killed by a runaway horse, or falling into machinery, or in some way meeting an untimely death. To-day we are exceedingly careful; we are protecting them in every possible way; we are taking care of them in our institutions and giving them every advantage, and then sending them out into the world—a menace to the rest of humanity.

It would be a dreadful thing if all these problems were solved and we didn’t have any people to give our money and charity to. I suppose we should become hard-hearted if we didn’t have any to befriend. Perhaps we want to keep enough of these unfortunates so that we can still contribute to their safety and welfare. But, my friends, when we realize the suffering, the terrors, the losses of all kinds that these people unintentionally, unwittingly cause us, we have another side of the problem. The menace of the feeble-minded is not a figure of speech. It is no undue sentimentalism that assures us that we need to take care of this group of people. We need to study them very seriously and very thoroughly; we need to hunt them out in every possible place and take care of them, and see to it that they do not propagate and make the problem worse, and that those who are alive to-day do not entail loss of life and property and moral contagion in the community by the things that they do because they are weak-minded.

HEALTH FIRST AND MATRIMONY AFTERWARD. By Edward C. Spitzka, M.D. The Semi-Monthly Magazine Section of the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia North-American, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, the Chicago Tribune, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the Cincinnati Enquirer, etc. May 11, 1913.