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Ludovici, die 8 Novembris, 1936 ANY FINANCIAL PROFIT made by the (jentral Office of the Sodality will be used tor the advancement of the Sodality movement and the cause of Oatholic Action. Deactdtfled Copyright, 1936 THE QUEEN'S WORK, Inc. What BIRTH CONTROL IS doing to The UNITED STATES I T WAS the arrival of the birth controllers in town that drove me to it. They came with their usual beating of drums and blow· ing of trumpets. They had newspaper hand· outs to present to the reporters, showing them clearly that birth control was the sal· vation of the nation in everything from un· employment to the seventeen·year locust. They presented learned statistics by sober- browed Ph. D.'s, not to mention stalwart M. D.'s of various degrees of publicity-mind- edness. They opened their convention with a grand display of chemical and mechanical contraceptives, from which large corpora- tions, thanks to the birth controllers, are making their millions each year. They made their usual attacks on the Catholic Church as being reactionary, out of date, behind the times, the obvious and well-known enemy of all progressive movements such as they represented. All of which sent me off in a somewhat new direction. I decided that using moral arguments on this particular group of 'con- ventioners assembled in my city seemed at least love's labor lost. The authority of Christ's Church they naturally regarded as -3- a broken reed on which to lean and a poor whipstock with which to beat an adversary. They presented statistics; they uttered prophecy and spoke in visions. They as· serted that, as a consequence of birth con· trol universally practiced, the millennium lay just ahead-completely happy marriages, wonderfully sound children who all bordered on genius, the end of unemployment, the end of war, the birth, if not of more chilo dren, at least of a newer and better civiliza- tion. "If," they cried, "we had fewer chil- dren, they would all be little geniuses, young artists. Birth control was the greatest aid to culture and the advance of civilization thus far discovered. And they marshalled their statistics to prove it. Remarkable Success I was impressed, though, as a matter of fact, I wondered where they got their statis- tics and why they picked just that particu- lar set. But I determined that I too should go down the avenue of marshalled figures and find out just how true theirs were, whether, perhaps, they might not have missed some that were more in accord- ance with what we could all see about us as the effects of birth control. For there is no doubt about it that the birth controllers have been phenomenally suc~essful. Since birth control as a philoso- phy of life, or rather as a philosophy of the eliminating of life, began in its modern ver- sion in France s'ome hundred 'and twenty- five years ago, it has moved with a tre- -4- mendous sweep and dash. The birth con- trollers have remarkably deserved their name. They have, as Chesterton wisely and shrewdly observed, eliminated births and made control unnecessary. They have led one movement that could appeal to the self- ish element in every human being and ap- peal in a fashion that fitted right into the most romantic cravings of self-centered young men and women. They could advocate love, they could clamor for the elimination of ' love's responsibilities and duties. They could urge romance and decry the conse- quences of romance. They could advise young people to follow the instincts of their hearts and marry, and then disregard all except their own selfish interests and the . indulgence of their selfish pleasures. I paused mentally to congratulate the most successful campaign in modern history. But I am not such a fool as to nave missed the fact that their campaign was quite the Simplest on record. It is the easiest thing in the world to persuade us selfish mortals to be systematically selfish. It is quite too simple an undertaking to encourage us lazy humans to dodge responsibility. Why We Oppose Like every other person who has seen the Catholic Church be most surprisingly right about practically every stand it has ever taken on human affairs, I did not relish the slaps at my church. In fact, supposing even that the Catholic Church is entirely wrong about this matter of birth control, any de- -5- cent person would still be impelled to ad- mire the reasons for its stand_ The Catho- lic Church has the unusual position in this our modern, humanly contemptuous day, of regarding human life as something very precious and important. Hence it naturally worries when it sees the birth controllers shutting the door in the face of life. The Catholic Church has the quite antediluvian but none the lllss beautiful and romantic belief that the individual soul of the lowest, meanest, most imbecile, and criminally in- clined child ever born is still destined to im- mortality, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, and hence something to be treated with infinite respect and watched over with deep yearning. The Catholic Church has a high esteem for motherhood; it regards all mothers with a little of .that burning enthusiasm with which it regards Mary the Mother; and it is more than a bit worried when it sees mothers encouraged to be selfish hedonists. The Catholic Church is deeply concerned when it watches a group, no matter how well intentioned and enthusiastic they may be, experiment, carelessly and without the clearest possible proofs that they are right, with the whole future of the human race. Say the Catholic Church is wrong. Say it is backward and absurdly conservative. Still you must in all honesty say that it is motivated by a decided love of human life and by a fear that selfishness may replace love, and the whole future of the race be -6- imperiled if the vast experiment into which the birth controllers are successfully hasten- ing millions does not work out as well as their optimistic prophecies and their gal· lantly subservient statistics might seem to indicate. No Catholic Sources But before we get to actual statistics, let me explain where I went to look for them. I used few Catholic authorities. Instead I decided to go to places where statistics are given in cold, impersonal, systematic fash- ion, without regard to what they prove or disprove. I went, then, to the reports of the bureaus of vital statistics, first of our own country, and then of various other na· tions which are concerned about the growth or decline of their populations. I got the recor.ds of insurance companies, which watch with deep interest the rise and fall of the birth rate. From the published reports of outstanding colleges and universities .1 got data based on the studies of the careers of their alumni and alumnae. I combed through recent volumes of that coldly ob· jective digest, "Facts," where statistics are given with the objectivity of so much ad- vertised cold fish. "The World Almanac" helped me a little on collateral facts with . which I was concerned. I made sure that no data had any actual reference to the pro or con of birth control, and were merely given in a setting that was a plain mar- shalling of facts for the reader or student to study and appraise. Throughout this little -7- booklet I shall quote no other figures than those derived from the above-mentioned sources. Overpopulation But before we plunge into the rather dry wastes of statistics, it is well to pause on the one argument that at first glance seems to be overwhelmingly in favor of the birth controllers' stand. "Unless we curb the birth rate," they argue, "in no time at all the world will be overcrowded beyond the point where human life will be endurable." Their treatment of this argument runs thus: Population increases geometrically; food increases arithmetically; habitable space remains the same. In other words, two people become through marriage four people; four people become eight; eight be- come sixteen; sixteen become thirty-two, and so on in amazingly rapid progression. The habitable space on the earth cannot by any expansion be increased beyond certain limits. The food supply increases only thus: two to four to six to eight to ten to twelve. Hence in no time at all the members of the human race, unless stopped in their "mad, rabbitlike multiplication," will be lit- erally standing on one another's heads, · liv- ing in a series of perilous mezzanines, and starving from exhaustion of the food supply. Terrifying picture, isn't it? But it has an amusing angle, and that is, that Plato and Aristotle, so I've been told, began to worry about that situation about -8- 2300 years ago. They foresaw the threat of the perilous situation overpopulation ful· filled, and the world clogged with human beings starving and sleeping on the ground in shifts; they saw it as a close possibility. They were well along the line of the birth controller's pet panic. Now, after 2300 years, there still seems to be a trifle of elbow room; and the wheat supply and the young pigs are not all being consumed in the breakfast cakes and sausage. Old Stuff The human race has been in existence for a great many centuries, and it is a some· what late date for the birth controllers to get into such a stew about it. Overpopula· tion should, one would think, show some signs of being imminent. But there is still Texas and South America and most of South Africa and Canada and our western states where one can live out of sight and hear· ing of the neighbors and their radio. I should hesitate to suggest, of course, that maybe we might leave a little of that worry to God. He does, you know, enter somewhat into the affairs of His creation, especially when asked to do so by His creatures. Perhaps He might be trusted even here, in view of the fact that over· population , after a quite considerable stretch of human history, does not seem to be just around the corner. HoweV'er, one must apologize for mentioning God these days; so we withdraw so untimely and perhaps inapropos an argument. -9- Pick Your Number Instead we can see what some eminent authorities on population have to say about the subject of overpopulation in the United States. We have at present some 130,000,000 inhabitants in our country. Mr. O. E. Baker, of the United States Department of Agri· culture, is not excessively perturbed about our future. He maintains, with no refer- ence to birth control, that on our present rich, meat-eating diet the United States' is capable of supporting without discomfort 275,000,000 people or fully twice our present population. If Americans would be content to go on the very healthful and perhaps advisable diet of vegetables, fruits and dairy products, he says, our country could sustain 500,000,000 people in comfort. That relieves your worry just a trifle, doesn't it? Of course the whole question of what con- stitutes overpopulation is answered by amusing surmises. Anybody's guess is as good as yours or mine. The birth controllers, for quite obvious reasons, always choose the surmises of those people who see star- vation when another million people are added to the sum total of the earth's in- habitants. But most sane statisticians have no such quaking fears. Let's see how wide is the gamut of their guesses, prophecies and surmises. At present, according to "The World Al- manac," the earth's population is about 1,700,000,000. Our first authority will give much consolation to the birth controllers -10- and treat them to agreeable tremors. Pearl estimates that the earth cannot take care of more than a total of 2,000,000,000. Pipkin raises that to 13,000,000,000 • . Quite a jump. Penck steps the guess up to 15,900,000,000. (If he had been really rash, he might have let it be a round 16,000,000,000.) Finally, just to show you how much the prophets really know, Franz Oppenheimer maintains that the earth is capable of supporting 200,- 000,000,000, about 125 times what it now con· tains. Never Happened So call your number and pick your own statistician. Only don't get into a panic when the birth controllers tell you that a week from next Friday the world will be as crowded as a department-store elevator and the food supply will be as low as that of Captain Bligh's men on their flight from the Bounty. Recurrently Rome and Greece had mild philosophical panics about overpopulation. They practiced, as I'm sure you know, very competent if savage birth control, often- times along the lines of infanticide. In the end they had to import barbarians to keep their level of population from falling hope- lessly low. Besides, city populations always have a tendency, with or without the prac- tice of birth control, to die out. Economic, sanitary, and industrial conditions make that inevitable. People have to be recruited from the country districts to save the cities. Cities do not need artificial birth control to -11"- destroy them; birth control is just an addi- tional means of wiping them out. "You may scorn our argument," continue the birth controllers, "but unless we curb our population, we . shall soon have nothing to eat. Our earth's cupboard will be empty, and we shall be left to starve." What! No Food? Birth controllers are notoriously devoid of a sense of humor. How they can use that argument in view of the present surplus of food everywhere is a little difficult to see. At least we must be pardoned the smile they are slow to .grant. Our wheat elevators are crammed with superfluous wheat. We raised a great hullabaloo because our young pigs were flung to a watery grave. We are paying .our farmers to plough their cotton under. Brazil is burning coffee for fuel. Cuba is snowed under by its sugar. All the na- tions are fighting fierce economic battles to dispose of the enormous superfluity of their farm products. They don't know what in the world to do with all the food that is piling up against the tariff walls reared about them. And the bir.th controller!? have only to flip open the pages of their ' Rand McNally geog- raphy to see the vast stretches of land not as. ye~ open to agriculture. Most of lush Africa still awaits development. Much of South America is open prairie or luxuriant, rank jungle. Oceania is. a, ' paradise for the enterprising prospector. Canada has spaces that , have scarcely been touched. -12~ Add to this the fact that agricultural methods have made great scientific ad· vances, and we see that the limit of the earth's productiveness has not begun to be reached. Texas intensively farmed would feed the entire United States. Irrigation has but just begun. Scientific farming and the use of chemistry to increase the yield of land are still quite primitive compared with parallel advances in industrial and mechan· ical fields. We have hardly scratched the surface of the earth for our food. Far more than half of the earth's farmers still plough with oxen and wooden ploughs. And today only eight million American farmers are needed to produce more than can be con· sumed by our 130,00,000 American citizens. The argument from . the poverty of our pantry is a pretty weak .one. The fact ac· tually is that there are not nearly enough people to consume what the farmers of America, not to mention those of the world, are producing this present moment. Unemployment We pause on another argument here, though we shall come to it again: "If we curb our population, the curse of unemplo'y, ment will be at an end. Surplus popula· tion is responsible for the unemployed." Let's meet that here and now with two authorities who think tl~e argument is, if anything, a little too simple. Writes Lionel Robbins, in "The Optimum Theory of Pop· ulation," quoted by Dr. Moore: "It is very seldom that there is a slump in the labor -13- market without the cry of overpopulation being raised. In its crude form, of course, this view is quite inadmissible. As Sir Wil· liam Beveridge has shown, unemployment is normally to be regarded as a by·product of industria l change and maladjustment. It is not to be regarded as a function of long· run productivity. Clearly the popular view which attributes any and every appearance of un employment to overpopulation . . . de- serves nothing but contempt." Dr. Kuczynski, of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, is of the same mind. He writes: "I even venture to say that if we set out to increase unem- ployment in this country for the next fifteen years, we could find no more efficient means than birth restriction on a very large scale." Thanks to B. C. Now it only takes a little thinking, un- perturbed by birth-control clamors, to realize that this is true. Falling population means a falling market. There are less people to feed. There are less people to ocupy houses, wear clothes, use transportation, buy lux- uries. Falling market means reduced pro- duction. People cannot be put to work to raise food for which there is no consumer; to build houses when there are no new people to buy them; to make clothes when there is nobody to wear them. Reduced pro- duction means unemployment. If food is not being raised or houses built, people are not employed to raise or to build. -14- Look at these simple propositions one after another: Falling population means falling markets. Falling markets mean reduced production. Reduced production m eans unemploymep,t, Therefore, red u c i n g the population through birth control means unemployment. That is clearly evident that one wonders that the birth controllers have the brass to keep shouting to the contrary. U nderconsumption The trouble with the country today is not overpopulation but underconsumption. We built our industries and laid out our farms with the idea that our population would keep up the rate of increase it had shown for decades. The birth controllers cut that rate of increase tremendously. (In a minute we shall see how effective has been that cut.) We suddenly found ourselves geared be- yond the rate of consumption made pos- sible by our falling population. What we need is more mouths to eat our bread and consume our bacon; more bodies to wear our clothes and use our furniture; more people to buy our cars and consume our luxuries. We are not overproducing; we are underconsuming. Now let's get statistical, hurt though it must. Let's look at what has actually hap- pened to the world during the brief but astonishingly successful career of the mod- ern birth controllers. They have had quite -15- a bit of time to translate their gay and gaudy prophecies into reality. They have had plenty of opportunity to turn theory into fact. Have they done so? What's the actual status brought about among man· kind through the widespread use of arti· ficial birth control? Let·s face the figures. They are not particularly cheering. We Die Dr. F. J. McCann. President of the League of National Life in England. has this to say: "While the reformers are bewailing overpopulation. the specter of depopulation is abroad in the land. pursuing undisturbed a stealthy and devastating career." Writes Dr. Edward Roberts Moore in "The Case Against Birth Control" (and I apolo· gize for quoting a Catholic): "Every coun· try in Europe that is not predominantly Slavic in origin or present racial composi· tion is today actually showing a deficit in reproduction. and precisely the same thing is happening in the United States." (Since this statement was made. Mussolini and Hit· leI' have taken steps to stop this in their lands.) We start, then. with what birth control has done to the population of these foreign countries. Our figures are on the basis of 1.000 of population. The Nations Fall England has been practicing birth control so widely that George Bernard Shaw, almost -16- twenty years ago, was worried by it and made the bald statement that there was scarcely an Englishman of the so-called bet- ter class who was not practicing it with either his wife or his mistress_ In 1933 the births in England per 1,000 were 14.4. The deaths were 12.3. That means practically that the population is now falling, and the re is worse to come. France has led the world in birth-control practices. Today it knows it is facing ex- tinction. In 1913 its birth rate was 19.1. In 1930 its birth rate was 16.1 and its death rate was 16.1-births actually just equalling deaths. That, of course, means that the pop- ulation is rapidly falling. On the other hand, let's take two Catholic countries, where birth control is held to be both immoral and unpatriotic. In Octo- ber, 1935, the births in I reland numbered 14,913; the deaths 10,933. Ireland may yet live to be revenge d as it watches England die. Catholic Italy in 1930 showed a birth rate of 23.5 per 1,000, and a death rate of 13.5. Its population ris es 300,000 each year. And Italy moves ahead. When Mr. Hearst and the other jingoes talk about the Yellow Peril, they are not merely blowing the wind. There is a peril which Europe and America may well face- the growth of Japan as compared with the falling off of the great powers elsewhere. Pagan Japan had, in 1930, 32.92 births per -17- 1,000, and 17.72 deaths. There is peril for falling Europe in the steadily rising popu· lation tide of the yellow races. Poor England I But we are not by any means through with the triumphant success of birth can· trollers in England. Let's see: The English birth rate fell 10 per cent in the past 10 years. In 20 years, childless families have in- creased 74 per cent. In 20 years, families of one child have increas ed 60.6 per cent. France Dies Let's journey back to France. During the first three months of 1934 there were 12,286 more deaths than births. During the first three months of 1935 there were 33,546 more deaths than births. In other words, we are, thanks to the succ ess of the French birth controllers, privileged to watch the actual dying of a nation. And is France justified in worrying about Germany? Let's look at those statistics. Germany, during that same second period, ;had 101,879 more births than deaths. Hitler is fighting against the death of his nation. The birth controllers have fought for the death of France. Each is winning. Let Franc e read the warning and beware. -18- What of America? Now we can turn from the picture of dying France and depleted England to the United States. Again we congratulate the birth controlle rs. They have done magnifi- cently. Let's see how our population has fallen since they really went to work. Our birth rate per thous a nd dropped thus in a series of years : In 1915: 25.1. In 1918: 24.6. In 1928: 20.7. In 1932: 17.0. A drop of almost 8 per 1000 in 17 years! Our congratulations to the birth controllers on a most successful campaign. Now let's see what that means in terms of our families in the United States. We have a total of 23,353,000 married couples. With no children, we have 7,447,000 couples. With only one child, we have 5,255,000. With only two children, we have 4,246,000. We Need Comment is hardly necessary, but Dr. Kuczynski writes: "With the fertility of 19 26 (greater than in 1928), the population is bound to die out ... and the fertility con· tinues its downward path in 1927." Down in -19- 1927? Look back at the drop between 1928 and 1932. And the population drop is more than that today. It is essential to remember that it takes 330 children to every 100 couples in the United States to keep the population stead- ily level. If less children than that are born, the population falls. Yet in 1931 there was an average of 220 ch i ldren for each 100 couples. So we were, even that long ago, on the downgrade. A Race of Elders Why, then, doesn't this show in our ac- tual population numbers? Why do we see~ to be increasing despite the fall of the birth rate? An article in The American Mercury, not likely to be pro-Christian or conservative in its viewpoint, answered that question some years ago. The article was called "A Na- tion of Elders." It simply indicated that we have in the United States lengthened the life span of the average man and woman. People live longer than they used to. Hence for the present the death rate is low. This makes it seem that our death rate does not measure up with and match our birth rate. But, as the author of the article pointed out, what is actually happening is this: Youth in America is dying out. The number of people on the far side of fifty is greatly in- creasing. The number on the near side of fifty is rapidly falling. The day will come when those whose live s-thanks to medi- -20- cine, sanitation, and otber modern aids- have been prolonged will start to die in large numbers. Then we shall see that all we did was keep alive our oldsters, that we did not stock our nation with fresh young life, young blood, young brains. No nation can of course exist unless the majority of its population is on the younger side of fifty. America is becoming a land of elders . And it is not on elders that a future can be built. B. C. Causes Unemployment Now let's come back to that matter of unemployment on which the birth control· lers love to ring the changes. "If," they cry, "birth control were widely practiced, we should end this unemployment completely." We've already seen one answer to that. Now we can see another. In fact we can completely retort the argument, and hereby do. I formally and solemnly accuse birth con- trol of being the biggest single cause of unemployment in America today. First, small families are, because they are small, necessarily limited consumers. Almost 17,000,000 of our more than 23,000,- 000 families have a total of only four mem- bers or less in each family. How can the United States, three-fourths of whose fam- ilies are made up of an average of four members each, possibly consume the goods which it is capable of producing? And if it can't, is it any wonder that our factories are running part-time and that workmen are in the breadlines? -21- Married Women and Jobs But there is another angle to the relation of birth control to unemployment, and here it is, baldly stated. Thanks to birth control, married women can keep and hold the jobs which otherwise would be held by men or by unmarried women who at present are out of work. I accuse birth controllers of making women selfish. I accuse them of disparag- ing the home as a career, of belittling motherhood, the highest natural vocation. If they had told women that homemaking was their first job and marriage their great- est natural career, they would not be filling the business world with childless wives and homeless married women who keep men and unmarried women from employment and from the opportunity of earning their living, What birth controllers have actually done is teach married women how to practice birth control so that they can indulge in the pleasures of marriage and yet continue to hold their jobs and keep others from taking them. They have trained married women to neglect their natural career of homemaking and to refuse their responsi- bilities as wives and mothers, while self- ishly holding jobs that others should now fill. Those who are most responsible for our economic depression and unemployment are the selfish married women, filling posi- tions in the business and professional world that should be held by men and by un- married women. -22- The Hard Facts Note that I admit there are many cases when it is regrettably necessary for a mar- ried woman to hold a job. The sickness of a husband or the needs of a family may often force her to give up homemaking and apparently shirk the responsibilities of motherhood. To these I extend my deep sympathy. I am talking here about the married women who enter marriage, add their salary to the salary of their husband, learn from the birth controllers how not to have children, selfishly keep on working so as to have more money for their luxuries, and refuse to give God and the state the children without which the future is lost. :Let's not become oratorical here. One easily can. Instead let's look at the hard facts . In 1930 the total of employed of both sexes in the United States was 48,849,920. Of these the men numbered 38,077,804, the women 10,772,116. And of these ' women 3,071,002 were mar- ried. This does not include, of course, the women who, in addition to their work in a farmer's house, do part-time work on the farm. Worse Ahead In other words well over three million women are holding jobs in addition to their jobs as wives and mothers. Or rather, for -23- the most part, they are holding jobs which make it impossible for them to do their work as wives and mothers. But they are not worrying; the birth controllers have told them how to avoid their responsibil- ities and yet have the name and the game of marriage; and they can blandly continue to- stand in the way of well over three mil- lion men and unmarried women getting em· ployment. This state of affairs, as birth control con- tinues to inculcate its lessons of syst ematic selfishness, is growing. The Marital Rela- tions Institute of New York City asked 13,000 young women entering marriage whether they intended to keep their jobs. Forty-three per cent replied that they did. Had they gone into marriage wholeheart- edly, they would have released 6,000 jobs that year to others. The birth controllers, however, made that unnecessary, and 6,000 men and unmarried women wait in vain for the jobs. Better Families? But the birth controller has been touched on a sore spot. "Don't speak ill of small families," he cries-or perhaps it is she who does the crying; it usually is.-"Small families are notably better families." . Waiving altogether the question of how many Beethovens or Mozarts or Little Flowers are being produced in families that have one or two children; waiving, na- turally, the question of how a childless family (please note we have now seven and -24- a half million such families) can be a fam- ily at all, we should still like to ask a few simple questions. Do you or do you not think that small families are likely to be schools of selfish- ness? Do you or do you not think that the children of deliberately small families are as likely to learn self-sacrifice, self-restraint and the social virtues as easily as the chil- dren of larger families? Are children of parents who, because of selfishness and personal desire for luxury, limit the number of their children likely to profit by that sort of example? Have you ever checked up to see how much of the world's genius has come from large families? We shall leave the birth controllers with these questions to answer while we go back to our statistics. The small family is the better family? I deny that absolutely_ Some small families that God has not blessed with many children may be lovely and sweet and fine and good. But a small family, small because it has shut the door in the face of other children, makes a pretty poor showing statistically. Let's see how many of these "better fam- ilies" take to the divorce courts. B. C. and Divorce In 1889, before the birth controllers had adopted French methods into the United States, American marriages numbered 530,- -25- 937; American divorces numbered 31,735, about one divorce for every 18 marriages. In 1913-and again the birth control cam- paign was not under way-marriages were 1,021,398 and divorces were 91,308, about one to 12. So, without birth control, the number of divorces in the United States had not grown very rapidly. Now the birth controllers get to work. In 1932 B. C. (of the era of birth control) we have 981,903 marriages and 160,338 divorces, or one divorce to about each 6 marriages. And the end is far from here. For the modern young couple have been taught to go into marriage with one eye on the divorce court. Of the cited 13,000 young women questioned by the Marital Relations Institute of New York, 34 per cent hoped that their mariage would last forever. (New York, be it noted, has a large Catholic pop- ulation; and that is the normal attitude of Catholics). The rest looked forward to mar- riage ranging in duration from one to twenty years. Why? Because birth control has broken the tie that binds a marriage-children. It has made it possible for the woman to shirk the responsibility of homemaking. It has sUbstituted selfishness in passion for un- selfishness in the rearing of children. It has made romance displace entirely duty, obli· gation, and the responsibilities of parent- hood, which hold couples together. Divorce has become appallingly common in the first year of marriage. It is almost -26- a commonplace that divorce occurs most fre- quently in childless families_ Death of Mother Love Birth-controlled families are the better families? Birth control, as a matter of brutal fact, is actually killing what all mankind formerly believed was unkillable. It is kill- ing mother love. To go back to the 13,000 young women already cited twice-they were also asked if they wanted children. "Do you expect to raise a family?" was the query. Only 2,739 replied that they hoped they would. In other words, less than one fourth actually wanted the joys of being a mother. Parallel to that, 5,000 young men about to be married were asked if they wished to raise a family. Forty-one hundred of them replied that they hoped to. God pity them if it be the fate of these young men to marry the women of the vast majority, whose hearts have been closed by the birth controllers to the hope and joy of motherhood. Killing Off the Best The statistics that have run through this booklet are, of course, eloquent proof that women have been taught by the birth con- trollers to put their own selfishness and comfort and beauty and money ahead of what was once regarded as the most pro- found and powerful instinct in the heart of woman, the desire to cradle little children against her heart. We are not through yet. The small fam- -27- By, says the birth controller, is the better family. Against that I enter the solemn charge: The successful proponents of hirth control are "actually eliminating tbp so-called better and supposedly higher typE:'Sl of families of American society. Let's look at some figures on this. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Com- pany made, in 1935, a study of various classes of society on the basis of 1000 fam- ilies of each class: To 1,000 families on relief, 210 childrel were born. To 1,000 families off relief, 135 were born, and in this ratio: To families with incomes of $1,200-127. To families with incomes of $2,000-113. To families with incomes over $2,000-107. In other words, the better equipped the parents were to bring children into the world and give them their oportunities for success, the less likely were they to have children at all. "Big Names" Die Out The statistics on the "big names" in America are, in regard to the children sup- posed to carry forward their traditions, pretty discouraging and decidedly startling. Of the married people in the American "Who's Who," the average is 2.8 child per couple. But many of these famous Aineri- -28- cans were old before birth control's real propaganda got under way. All of Yale's students average less than 2.4 per father. Harvard's classes from 1891 to 1900 aver· aged 1.5 per father. Twenty-three per cent of Vassar's mar· ried graduates are childless; the classes from 1897 to 1906 averaged 1.1 child per mother. Wellesley, with 57 per cent of its 4,000 graduates married, shows less than .75 of a child per mother. It is a notorious fact that the immigraDl and underprivileged families of America are keeping up our appearance of stable popu· . lation. The so-called "better families" have listened to the plausible challenge of the birth controllers, ap.d have gone on record, time and again, as theoretically believing and personally practicing birth control. We are seeing those who once were America's leaders exterminating themselves. Meet Crime With Crime Was Theodore Roosevelt far wrong when he slapped · on the birth con trollers the name they would love to forget-Apostles of Race Suicide? He lived long enough to see the birth controllers earn that title with appalling speed and high efficiency. I remember on a certain occasion throw· ing this argument out to a birth-control -29- leader and asking her for an answer. She rather sadly admitted the facts. There was, of course, no denying them. But then she brightened. "You see," she continued, "what we must do is teach the poorer elements of our society to follow the example of the better, so that they will not overwhelm us wbo are supposed to be the leaders." To keep the better elements in existence, her simple solution was to teach the "poorer" elements to destroy themselves too. Healthy Mothers "Anyway," continue the birth controllers, "mothers of small families are healthier than mothers of large ones." Are they? There is a very considerable difference of opinion on that. Dr. Ausems of Holland investigated 165 families with over 9 children each. He found that of these, 108 mothers died. at an average age of 64.5 . years; and 57 mothers were still alive at 64 and over. Dr. Helen Gamgee of England investigated 500 poor families of fair size and found that the health both of mothers and children was better in families of more than five children than in cases of families of less than five . Why? Dr. F. J. McCann explains: "In pregnancy woman attains her full physio· logical consummation, while the lack of this attainment favors the development of path· ological changes in her s ex organs. . . . It is well known that many women live to a -30- ripe old age who have given birth to a large number of children. Thus to regard pregnancy, or stil more, repeated pregnancy, as a disease, is not only pathologically un- sound, but it is untrue." With Tears There is another argument which is in· evitably brought forward by the birth con· troller. The argument is usually accom· panied by blue light and soft music and a suggestion of tears and deep human pity. And there is no doubt about it that the argument is a touching one. Many of us have met young couples who desire children but are faced with real poverty or an acute financial problem. We know that there can often be sheer tragedy in that situation. The birth controller puts the argument thus: "There are thousands of young couples who want children. But the man's salary will not permit them to have a child, or at least another child. Though they must forego the joy of parenthood, we will not force them to forego the joy of love . Birth control permits them to marry even though they may not, because of their poverty, have children. They are excused because they cannot afford a child." The End Justifies the Means? For many a long year we Jesuits were charged by our enemies with boldly and baldly teaching that the end justifies the -31- means. We never, of course, taught such a thing; but now we bow politely to ·a group who teach it without hesitation. "What about the morality of birth control?" we ask the birth controller. "What's that got to do with the case?" demands the birth controller. "The young couple can't afford a child. Therefore they are not obliged to have one. Birth control is right and moral because it is economically valuable to them." Gladly do we step aside to watch the old argument that the end justifies the means being used by those who once charged us with using it and cried out against us for our supposed sin. First of all, we Catholics maintain that a moral crime cannot be justified by an eco- nomic good . We cannot, for example, kill little orphans even though without them the state has enough people on its relief roll. We cannot, even though our hospitals are no longer able to care for their increased population, put an end to the lives of in- curables so as to make room for others who may need the hospital beds. The end, how- ever noble, does not justify the means. And we are not going to secure better or even decent salaries for young couples by advising them to meet their present eco- nomic situation by practicing artificial birth control. And we find that the argument "They cannot afford another child" has a great many mysterious and wonderful meanings. It may mean that they cannot afford another -32- child and a new automobile this year. It ofte n simply means that the wife who has a job that yields her enough for a pleasant annual vacation cannot take time out from that job in order to have a child . In cases I myself have come in contact with, it has meant this: We have to choose between another child-or even a first child-and a trip to Europe; we think the trip is more important. I have not heard the birth controllers in- veighing strongly against attitudes like that. They seem to accept these cases as coming under the general head of economic neces- sity acting in favor of birth control. Let's Help However, I quite well .know that there are young couples who in these still fre- quently desperate days simply have not money enough to bring a child decently into the world. That is possible. It is often true. I am aware too that, for many a fine young man and woman, turning their backs on children is one of the worst privations brought about by his joblessness or her poverty. They want children. They feel that the economic system which makes children impossible to them is wrong and should be changed. I would at this point beg the birth con- trollers to help improve our economic con- ditions by using in this direction a little more of that marvelous energy they employ in promoting birth control. Perhaps, if they -33- spent less time and money persuading young couples not to have children and some of that same time and money working to im- prove the conditions of young couples who marry, the young couple s might not have to face the desolation of childlessness. I should like to see the birth controllers get interested in maternity funds which will make possible cheap and safe deliveries for young poor mothers. I should like to see them establishing, instead of their birth-con- trol clinics (where they hand out their in- formation to perfectly strong and healthy and well-to-do women who ought to be hav- ing children), inexpensive maternity hos- pitals where these young mothers, for whom they express so great a pity, could have their babies and have them without devas- tating expense. There is no doubt whatso- ever that the birth controllers have chosen the easier part. They have not faced the economic problems of young couples who want children. They have simply told young couples to dodge their economic problems by not having children_ Now it would be a waste of time to urge upon the birth controllers that artificial birth control is immoral. I find them as a general rule singularly uninterested in whether it is moral or immoral, right or wrong_ Indeed Mrs_ Margaret Sanger is quoted as writing in the Birth Control Re- view, as early as 1917, to settle that ques- tion once and for all_ "No law," she says, in reference to the advancement of their cam- paign, "is too sacred to be broken_" Well, -34- that seems to be that. It would be a little difficult to argue on moral grounds with one who is reported to start a campaign by tossing all law upon the woodpHe for future kindling. Lawful However, for the young couple who sim- ply cannot, because of health or poverty, do their simple patriotic duty by giving God and the nation children, there is the law- ful method either of complete or regulated abstinence_ I am not gOing into the law- fulness of that here. I am merely referring to it in passing, since I have at an earlier date written a complete booklet, "What ' of Lawful Birth Control?" I merely remind readers that the Church does not require young people to have children any more than it requires them to marry. It merely takes the quite intelligible stand that one cannot exercise the rights and privileges of marriage and yet in so doing thwart the essential and terrifically important purposes and obligations of marriage_ One cannot take the natural function upon which de- pends the whole future of the human race, exercise it freely and as a source of en- tirely personal pleasure, and then take de- liberate steps that that function shall not fulfill its primary purpose. We are not going into that here. The Danger Instead let me quote the man who wrote me in annoyed fashion in this vein: "I see -35- no difference between the effect of your so-called lawful Catholic birth control, your Rhythm Theory, on the permanence of our race, and that of the artificial birth control methods which I advocate. Mine are merely safer and surer. I agree that in the end, if things go on as they are now going, with artificial birth control, we shall destroy the human race or its best elements. But so will your Rhythm Theory." May I confess that there are many Catho· lics who worry about the effect that would be produced if the Rhythm Theory were practiced on any wide scale? There are, hqwever, several differences between the policy of restraint or abstinence, partial or complete, and the policy of artificial con- traceptives. The first difference lies in the quite obvious human element. Man may, because of passion or love, break through even the most determined form of self-re- straint imd" ~bstinence. He is not likely to break through the artificial sterlization of the birth controllers. Realizing the ghastly number of abortions that have been per- formed when contraceptives failed, they have labored to make results guaranteeable. Beyond that, however, there is this im- portant fact. The Rhythm Theory is per- mitted by an organization, the Catholic Church, which at the same time most vigor- ously and insistently preaches to its people the obligations of their state of life. It in- sists with married people that their duty is to have children. It points out the glory of -3"6- parenthood and the honor in God's sight of cooperating with Him in the creation of citizens of His eternal kingdom. It reminds them that some day, as they stand before the throne of their Eternal Judge, His sen- tence upon them as parents will be' measured by how well they fulfilled their:, duties as parents, and whether their self·restraint and abstinence were motivated by their selfish- ness or by a necessity which they deplored. The Catholic Church permits the Rhythm Theory ' cautiously and with many a warn- ing. It does not present the Rhythm Theory as a cure-all for the ills of society or as a policy which, once adopted on a large scale, will correct our economic problems and put everyone back to work, end inter- national wars, and bring about the millen- nium. It is just such a cure-all as this that birth controllers offer in birth control. The Church permits the Rhythm Theory merely as something which may be tolerated-but tolerated almost fearfully. High authorities in the Church are constantly warning priests and. Catholic physicians to give out this theory only for good cause and to give it with a clear statement of the duties of parents and the obligations and social re- sponsibilities of young men and women en· tering marriage. All One-Sided How entirely different has been the policy of the birth controllers. To read their writ- ings, you would swear that here in birth control was something just short of heroic -37- virtue. "Voluntary parenthood" of the lone child is treated as something very noble. "Here," they cry, "is the solution of world problems. Here is the policy which only dunderheads, morons, and benighted Catho- lics fail to see as the highest expression of civilization and the cure for all our present evils. Frankly I am not much impressed by the use birth controllers make of the economic argument. I am not moved to tears by their stories of these pitiful young couples who cannot afford a baby, who must be saved from the poverty and degradation which will result if they have another child. Indeed, I pity all poor young couples. But the irony of the birth controllers' stand lies in the fact that their preaching is seldom directed to the poor :young couples. Rather do they c'onfine themselves to the very ones who can, because of wealth and opportunity, best affo.rd.Jo have children. I shall become a little more impressed when I find the birth controllers going about pleading with the wealthy young couples to have even the 3.3 children which are necessary to keep their line and their race from extinction. I shall feel they are most sincere in this concentration of argument on the poor when I find them just as eager to have the rich and well situated bear children, and many children, as they are to have the poor and badly situated stop bear- ing them. I note the quite obvious fact that the -38- earnest disciples who gather at the call of the birth-control prophets meet in swank hotels, wear the best of Paris fashions, drive late-model cars, and cheer on the speakers who plead for less children for the poor- while they themselves, these well-to-do women, never realize that the argument might be retorted: "If the poor must havl'l less children because they cannot bring them up properly, you should have more because you so obviously can_" What About More for the Rich? do not find the birth controllers exhort- ing Junior Leaguers and the alumnae of fashionable sororities or the daughters of millionaires to have large families. They are vehement in their pity for the poor. They are not vehement in their scorn of the rich who are neglecting their duty to the future, not through any financial poverty or lack of good medical care, but because they have, by these very birth controllers, been ex- horted to selfishness and trained to regard as benighted and out-of-date semi-barbarians, quite unfit for membership in a fashionable country club, all who undertake their duty as · mothers of the nation. When the banners of the birth controllers flare out with exhortations to those who can afford large families to have them, I shall be more impressed with their sincerity . . Certainly any decent man knows tha.t motherhood is a difficult career. He admires, as he admires almost no one else in the -39- world, the woman who accepts its respon- sibilities bravely_ He is aware that it is a ca~eer fraught with pain and weariness, with ingratitude and the stern renunciations that accompany all great careers. But he is not inclined to think that the great mothers of the past regretted, with the passing of time, the children they bore, the work they undertook for them, or the sacrifices of their own personal pleasure and ease, a sacrifice which was necessary for the difficult task of training child rEm to walk the ways of good citizenship on the road to the Lover of Little Children. It is a terrible thing that the birth controllers, by their systematic policy, have tended to belittle this great career in the eyes of women. They have been alarmingly successful, We have seen only the beginnings of their work. What dees the future hold? If Sentimentalists Win- So I charge the birth controllers with be- ing, in the main, well meaning, sincere, ignorant, shortsighted, unpatriotic senti- mentalists. They are well meaning; for otherwise I doubt if they could fight so lustily for their cause. They are sincere; they have honestly trained themselves to be myopic enough to see only the arguments for their case. They are, however, ignorant; they do not know that birth control has been a recurring human phenomenon in his- tory-as, for example, in Greece and ·in Rome-to the destruction of civilizations. They are deliberately ignorant of what -40- birth control is actually dOing to the world today. They are shortsighted; the fact that they are relieving this or that poor mother here and now, let's say, of the necessity: of bearing children to a drunken father, makes them fail to look ahead to what will happen a few years from now should they succeed in persuading the majority of women that, since motherhood is always painful and in- evitably filled with problems and work and worry, birth control gives them an easy out. They are sentimentalists; for the tears of this or that modern woman begging to be relieved of the necessity of future child- bearing make them blind to the effects of their policy on the nation and the race. They will not even face the fact that they are-they of the wealthier and better edu- cated class-eliminating the very group which they regard as the peak of civiliza- tion and the topmost point of society. God forgive them. Surely, here again is a group who know not what they do. -41- OTHER EXCELLENT PAMPHLETS ON MARRIAGE SUBJECTS Speaking of Birth Control What of Lawful Birth Control? Marry Your Own Forever and Forever They're Married! Your Partner in Marriage Murder in the Classroom All by Father Daniel A. Lord, S. J. Single copy 10c 25 for $2.25 50 for $4.00 Send for complete list of pamphlets. The Outstanding Features of . 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