have a hard struggle through life, which may have to go through endless 

misery and suffering, fills them with anguish. * * * * * 

"We see about us millions of working men and women who go through life, 

from cradle to grave, without a ray of joy, without anything that makes 

life worth living. In the higher classes we see a constant, hard, 

infuriated struggle to make a living, to make a career, and the spectre 

of poverty is almost as unremittingly before the eyes of the middle and 

professional classes as it is before the eyes of the laborer. And all 

over we see ignorance, superstition, beliefs bordering on insanity, 

hardness, coarseness, rowdyism, brutality, crime and prostitution; 

prostitution of the body, and what is worse, prostitution of the mind, 

the hiding or selling of one's convictions for a mess of pottage. And 

our prisons, asylums, and hospitals are not decreasing, but increasing 

in number and inmates. 

"It is my sincerest and deepest conviction that we could accomplish 

incomparably more if only a small part of the energy and money now spent 

on philanthropic efforts were expended in teaching the women, the 

married women of the poor, how to limit the number of their children; in 

other words, how to prevent conception. It would work a wonderful reform 

in the lives of the poor, and our slums would be metamorphosed in ten 

years. * * * It is we who are to blame now for the large families of 

the poor, and for this reason we are morally obligated to give them the 

financial and medical aid that they demand. But when effectual means 

are put into their hands for limiting the number of their offspring, 

then they, and not we, will be to blame if they do not make use of 

them. * * * * 

"The rich and the upper-middle classes, those to whom several children 

would be the least burden, are quite familiar with the various means of 

prevention. The poorer middle classes use preventives recommended by 

their friends; these preventives sometimes succeed, sometimes fail, and 

sometimes ruin the woman's health. While the very poor, the 

wage-earners, those who can least afford to have unlimited progeny, 

knowing no means of prevention, go on breeding to their own and to the 

community's detriment. The result, as you can plainly see, is a general 

lowering of the physical and mental stamina of the race. For if the 

cultured and the well-to-do do not breed, or have only a few children, 

while the poor and the ignorant go on having a numerous progeny for 

which they cannot well provide, and which they cannot afford to educate