CONSTRUCTIVE ASPECT 



OF BIRTH CONTROL 



Some Classes Need More of It, Others Need Less — Birth Control Movement Only 



a Part of the General Problem of Population — A 



Program for Eugenics^ 



Robert J. Sprague 



Professor of Economics and Sociology, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst, 



Mass. 



IN THIS paper I shall not expect to 

 introduce new data on the birth 

 control question. It has already 

 been proved, to my satisfaction at 

 least, that birth control under certain 

 conditions is desirable for the highest 

 interests of the family and society. I 

 also know that birth control is carried 

 to an excessive degree among the middle 

 classes of our native population in the 

 industrial and intensely civilized regions 

 of this country. I wish to show in this 

 discussion the relation which birth con- 

 trol bears to the greater problem of popu- 

 lation and race vitality in the United 

 States. 



Excessive birth rate beyond the abilit}' 

 of the parents to support and the re- 

 sources of the nation to provide oppor- 

 tunities is one of the greatest evils that 

 can befall a people. 



In China, under the fallacies of 

 ancestor worship, population treads 

 upon the heels of subsistence, with the 

 result that famine, pestilence and flood 

 must consume the sur])lus. 



In India, early marriage and excessi\'c 

 birth rate, stimulated by reUgious and 

 philosophical folly, crush the hopes and 

 {)ossibilities of the race, prevent the 

 education of the young, the creation of 

 capital and the development of the 

 human resources, leaving a tangled, 

 squirming, starving mass of ho])cless 

 humanity, stunting and crii)i)ling one 

 of the brainiest types of the hiiniaii race. 



The barbaric birth rate of ambitious 

 Germany, hemmed in as she is by the 

 other nations, made the great war in- 

 evitable and will, if it keeps up, make 

 wars forever in the future. Some 

 believe that this will work eugenically 

 for the survival and i^redominance of 

 the strongest and best race, but this is 

 still a mooted question. 



The survival of the merely "strong" 

 may result in the survival of the strong 

 hog. Pressure of population on sub- 

 sistence and area develops brutality, 

 selfishness and disregard for human 

 life; it crushes leisure, generosity, and 

 art and makes impossible some of the 

 finer virtues of a race. 



BIRTH CONTROL VS. BIRTH RELEASE 



For one great section of the popula- 

 tion we need birth control and for the 

 other birth release. Massachusetts is 

 the only State that has for many decades 

 taken birth statistics on a basis of na- 

 tivity and these show that the birth rate 

 of her foreign-born population is about 

 three times the birth rate of her native, 

 mostly Anglo-Saxon, jjeople; the birth 

 rate being fourteen per thousand and 

 the death rate eighteen per thousand in 

 the same native group. There are 

 many reasons to believe that practically 

 the same situation holds in other States 

 among the people of the same class. 

 Merely to sustain the poi)ulation and 

 not to increase it cvcrv married woman 



' Read in New York City at the thirtcenth"aiimial nu'cliiig of the American Genetic Associa- 

 tion, December 27, 1916. 



58 



