Chapter XXXIX: Section 6: Specially Hurtful to the Poor

(a) _Affecting the Young_

There are three special and peculiar evils that attend the teaching of birth control amongst the poor. Of the first a doctor has written as follows:

"Morally, the doctrine is indefensible--it follows the line of least
resistance, and sacrifices the spirit to the flesh. Materially, it is
fraught with grave danger to the home and to our national existence. It
is proposed to disseminate a knowledge of contraceptive methods
throughout the overcrowded homes of the ill-fed, ill-clad poor. Now it
is in these homes that the moral sense has already but little chance of
development, where the child of eight or ten already knows far more
than is good for the health of either body or mind, and, though we may
succeed in reducing the size of the family, yet the means we employ
will militate against the raising of the moral tone of the household,
and the children will not be any less precocious than before." [76]

That danger is ignored by the advocates of birth-control. "But he that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for, him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth, of the sea." [77]

(b) _Exposing the Poor to Experiment_

Secondly, the ordinary decent instincts of the poor are against these practices, and indeed they have used them less than any other class. But, owing to their poverty, lack of learning, and helplessness, the poor are the natural victims of those who seek to make experiments on their fellows. In the midst of a London slum a woman, who is a doctor of German philosophy (Munich), has opened a Birth Control Clinic, where working women are instructed in a method of contraception described by Professor McIlroy as "the most harmful method of which I have had experience." [78] When we remember that millions are being spent by the Ministry of Health and by Local Authorities--on pure milk for necessitous expectant and nursing mothers, on Maternity Clinics to guard the health of mothers before and after childbirth, for the provision of skilled midwives, and on Infant Welfare Centres--all for the single purpose of bringing healthy children into our midst, it is truly amazing that this monstrous campaign of birth control should be tolerated by the Home Secretary. Charles Bradlaugh was condemned to jail for a less serious crime.

(c) _Tending towards the Servile State_

Thirdly, the policy of birth control opens the way to an extension of the Servile State, [79] because women as well as men could then be placed under conditions of economic slavery. Hitherto, the rule has been that during child-bearing age a woman must be supported by her husband, and the general feeling of the community has been opposed to any conditions likely to force married women on to the industrial market. In her own home a woman works hard, but she is working for the benefit of _her_ family and not directly for the benefit of a stranger. If, instead of bearing children, women practise birth control, and if children are to be denied to the poor as a privilege of the rich, then it would be very easy to exploit the women of the poorer classes. If women have no young children why should they be exempt from the economic pressure that is applied to men? And indeed, where birth control is practised women tend more and more to supplant men, especially in ill-paid grades of work. One of the birth controllers has suggested that young couples, who otherwise could not afford to marry, should marry but have no children, and thus continue to work at their respective employments during the day. As the girl would have little time for cooking and other domestic duties, this immoralist is practically subverting the very idea of a home! The English poor have already lost even the meaning of the word "property," and if the birth controllers had their way the meaning of the word "home" would soon follow. The aim of birth control is generally masked by falsehood, but the urging of this policy on the poor points unmistakably to the Servile State. When a nation, or a section of a nation, is oppressed, their birth-rate rises. That is the immutable law of nature as witnessed in history. Thus, the Israelites increased under the oppression of the Pharaohs. Thus, the Irish, from the Union to the Famine, multiplied prodigiously under the oppression of an iniquitous political and land system. By the operation of this law the oppressed grow in numbers, and break their chains.