Produced by Eric Eldred and Distributed Proofeaders.
WOMAN AND THE NEW RACE
BY
MARGARET SANGER
With A Preface By Havelock Ellis
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New York 1920
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DEDICATED TO
THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER, A MOTHER
WHO GAVE BIRTH TO ELEVEN LIVING CHILDREN
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PREFACE
The modern Woman Movement, like the modern Labour Movement, may besaid to have begun in the Eighteenth century. The Labour movementarose out of the Industrial Revolution with its resultant tendency toover-population, to unrestricted competition, to social misery anddisorder. The Woman movement appeared as an at first neglectedby-product of the French Revolution with its impulses of generalhuman expansion, of freedom and of equality.
Since then, as we know, these two movements have each had a great andvigorous career which is still far from completed. On the whole theyhave moved independently along separate lines, and have at timesseemed indeed almost hostile to each other. That has ceased to be thecase. Of recent years it has been seen not only that these twomovements are not hostile, but that they may work togetherharmoniously for similar ends.
One final step remained to be taken—it had to be realised not onlythat the Labour movement could give the secret of success to the womanmovement by its method and organization, but that on the other hand,woman held the secret without which labour is impotent to reach itsends. Woman, by virtue of motherhood is the regulator of thebirthrate, the sacred disposer of human production. It is in thedeliberate restraint and measurement of human production that thefundamental problems of the family, the nation, the whole brotherhoodof mankind find their solution. The health and longevity of theindividual, the economic welfare of the workers, the general level ofculture of the community, the possibility of abolishing from the worldthe desolating scourge of war—all these like great human needs,depend, primarily and fundamentally, on the wise limitation of thehuman output. It does not certainly make them inevitable, but itrenders them possible of accomplishment; without it they have beenclearly and repeatedly proved to be impossible.
These facts have long been known to the few who view the worldrealistically. But it is not the few who rule the world. It is themasses—the ignorant, emotional, volatile, superstitious masses—whorule the world. It is they who choose the few supreme persons whomanage or mismanage the world's affairs. Even the most stupid of usmust be able to see how it is done now, for during recent years thewhole process has been displayed before us on the very largest scale.
The lesson has not been altogether in vain. It is furnishing a newstimulus to those who are working for the increase of knowledge, andof practical action based on knowledge, among the masses, the masseswho alone possess the power to change the force of the world for goodor for evil, and by growth in wisdom to raise the human race on to ahigher level.
That is why the little book by Margaret Sanger, whose right to speakwith authority on these matters we all recognize, cannot be too widelyread. To the few who think, though they may here and there differ onpoints of detail, it is all as familiar as A. B. C. But to themillions w