To
Kate Crane Gartz
in acknowledgment of her unceasing efforts for a
better world, and her fidelity to those
who struggle to achieve it.
| CONTENTS | |
|---|---|
| [PART THREE: THE BOOK OF LOVE] | |
| PAGE | |
| [Chapter XXVIII.] The Reality of Marriage | [3] |
| Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love. | |
| [Chapter XXIX.] The Development of Marriage | [8] |
| Deals with the sex-relationship, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society. | |
| [Chapter XXX.] Sex and Young America | [15] |
| Discusses present-day sex arrangements, as they affect the future generation. | |
| [Chapter XXXI.] Sex and the "smart Set" | [23] |
| Portrays the moral customs of those who set the fashion in our present-day world. | |
| [Chapter XXXII.] Sex and the Poor | [29] |
| Discusses prostitution, the extent of its prevalence, and the diseases which result from it. | |
| [Chapter XXXIII.] Sex and Nature | [33] |
| Maintains that our sex disorders are not the result of natural or physical disharmony. | |
| [Chapter XXXIV.] Love and Economics | [36] |
| Maintains that our sex disorders are of social origin, due to the displacing of love by money as a motive in mating. | |
| [Chapter XXXV.] Marriage and Money | [40] |
| Discusses the causes of prostitution, and that higher form of prostitution known as the "marriage of convenience." | |
| [Chapter XXXVI.] Love Versus Lust | [46] |
| Discusses the sex impulse, its use and misuse; when it should be followed and when repressed. | |
| [Chapter XXXVII.] Celibacy Versus Chastity | [51] |
| The ideal of the repression of the sex-impulse, as against the ideal of its guidance and cultivation. | |
| [Chapter XXXVIII.] The Defense of Love | [55] |
| Discusses passionate love, its sanction, its place in life, and its preservation in marriage. | |
| [Chapter XXXIX.] Birth Control | [60] |
| Deals with the prevention of conception as one of the greatest of man's discoveries, releasing him from nature's enslavement, and placing the keys of life in his hands. | |
| [Chapter XL.] Early Marriage | [66] |
| Discusses love marriages, how they can be made, and the duty of parents in respect to them. | |
| [Chapter XLI.] The Marriage Club | [71] |
| Discusses how parents and elders may help the young to avoid unhappy marriages. | |
| [Chapter XLII.] Education for Marriage | [75] |
| Maintains that the art of love can be taught, and that we have the right and the duty to teach it. | |
| [Chapter XLIII.] The Money Side of Marriage | [79] |
| Deals with the practical side of the life partnership of matrimony. | |
| [Chapter XLIV.] The Defense of Monogamy | [83] |
| Discusses the permanence of love, and why we should endeavor to preserve it. | |
| [Chapter XLV.] The Problem of Jealousy | [89] |
| Discusses the question, to what extent one person may hold another to the pledge of love. | |
| [Chapter XLVI.] The Problem of Divorce | [93] |
| Defends divorce as a protection to monogamous love, and one of the means of preventing infidelity and prostitution. | |
| [Chapter XLVII.] The Restriction of Divorce | [97] |
| Discusses the circumstances under which society has the right to forbid divorce, or to impose limitations upon it. | |
| [PART FOUR: THE BOOK OF SOCIETY] | |
| [Chapter XLVIII.] The Ego and the World | [103] |
| Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life. | |
| [Chapter XLVIX.] Competition and Co-operation | [107] |
| Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life. | |
| [Chapter L.] Aristocracy and Democracy | [115] |
| Discusses the idea of superior classes and races, and whether there is a natural basis for such a doctrine. | |
| [Chapter LI.] Ruling Classes | [119] |
| Deals with authority in human society, how it is obtained, and what sanction it can claim. | |
| [Chapter LII.] The Process of Social Evolution | [122] |
| Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed. | |
| [Chapter LIII.] Industrial Evolution | [126] |
| Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached. | |
| [Chapter LIV.] The Class Struggle | [132] |
| Discusses history as a battle-ground between ruling and subject classes, and the method and outcome of this struggle. | |
| [Chapter LV.] The Capitalist System | [136] |
| Shows how wealth is produced in modern society, and the effect of this system upon the minds of the workers. | |
| [Chapter LVI.] The Capitalist Process | [142] |
| How profits are made under the present industrial system and what becomes of them. | |
| [Chapter LVII.] Hard Times | [145] |
| Explains why capitalist prosperity is a spasmodic thing, and why abundant production brings distress instead of plenty. | |
| [Chapter LVIII.] The Iron Ring | [148] |
| Analyzes further the profit system, which strangles production, and makes true prosperity impossible. | |
| [Chapter LIX.] Foreign Markets | [151] |
| Considers the efforts of capitalism to save itself by marketing its surplus products abroad, and what results from these efforts. | |
| [Chapter LX.] Capitalist War | [155] |
| Shows how the competition for foreign markets leads nations automatically into war. | |
| [Chapter LXI.] The Possibilities of Production | [158] |
| Shows how much wealth we could produce if we tried and how we proved it when we had to. | |
| [Chapter LXII.] The Cost of Competition | [162] |
| Discusses the losses of friction in our productive machine, those which are obvious and those which are hidden. | |
| [Chapter LXIII.] Socialism and Syndicalism | [166] |
| Discusses the idea of the management of industry by the state, and the idea of its management by the trade unions. | |
| [Chapter LXIV.] Communism and Anarchism | [170] |
| Considers the idea of goods owned in common, and the idea of a society without compulsion, and how these ideas have fared in Russia. | |
| [Chapter LXV.] Social Revolution | [175] |
| How the great change is coming in different industries, and how we may prepare to meet it. | |
| [Chapter LXVI.] Confiscation Or Compensation | [179] |
| Shall the workers buy out the capitalists? Can they afford to do it, and what will be the price? | |
| [Chapter LXVII.] Expropriating the Expropriators | [183] |
| Discusses the dictatorship of the proletariat, and its chances for success in the United States. | |
| [Chapter LXVIII.] The Problem of the Land | [188] |
| Discusses the land values tax as a means of social readjustment, and compares it with other programs. | |
| [Chapter LXIX.] The Control of Credit | [192] |
| Deals with money, the part it plays in the restriction of industry, and may play in the freeing of industry. | |
| [Chapter LXX.] The Control of Industry | [198] |
| Discusses various programs for the change from industrial autocracy to industrial democracy. | |
| [Chapter LXXI.] The New World | [202] |
| Describes the co-operative commonwealth, beginning with its money aspects; the standard wage and its variations. | |
| [Chapter LXXII.] Agricultural Production | [206] |
| Discusses the land in the new world, and how we foster co-operative farming and co-operative homes. | |
| [Chapter LXXIII.] Intellectual Production | [210] |
| Discusses scientific, artistic, and religious activities, as a superstructure built upon the foundation of the standard wage. | |
| [Chapter LXXIV.] Mankind Remade | [215] |
| Discusses human nature and its weaknesses, and what happens to these in the new world. | |
PART THREE
THE BOOK OF LOVE
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE REALITY OF MARRIAGE
(Discusses the sex-customs now existing in the world, and their relation to the ideal of monogamous love.)
Just as human beings through wrong religious beliefs torture one another, and wreck their lives and happiness; just as through wrong eating and other physical habits they make disease and misery for themselves; just so they suffer and perish for lack of the most elementary knowledge concerning the sex relationship. The difference is that in the field of religious ideas it is now permissible to impart the truth one possesses. If I tell you there is no devil, and that believing this will not cause you to suffer in an eternity of sulphur and brimstone, no one will be able to burn me at the stake, even though he might like to do so. If I advise you that it is not harmful to eat beefsteak on Friday, or to eat thoroughly cooked pork any day of the week, neither the archbishops nor the rabbis nor the vegetarians will be able to lock me in a dungeon. But if I should impart to you the simplest and most necessary bit of knowledge concerning the facts of your sex life—things which every man and woman must know if we are to stop breeding imbecility and degeneracy in the world—then I should be liable, under federal statutes, to pay a fine of $5,000, and to serve a term of five years in a federal penitentiary. Scarcely a week passes that I do not receive a letter from someone asking for information about such matters; but I dare not answer the letters, because I know there are agencies, maintained and paid by religious superstition, employing spies to trap people into the breaking of this law.
I shall tell you here as much as I am permitted to tell, in the simplest language and the most honest spirit. I believe that human beings are meant to be happy on this earth, and to avoid misery and disease. I believe that they are given the powers of intelligence in order to seek the ways of happiness, and I believe that it is a worthy work to give them the knowledge they need in order to find happiness.