THE GREAT PROCREATION FETISH 191 



sins, the sin is that other's ; but that if they 

 cause the death of a little one, by checking the 

 hand that is stretched to save, the crime is their 

 very own. On their heads, then, rests the innocent 

 blood ; from their hands should be asked an awful 

 account. 



The reader is perhaps wondering how all the 

 foregoing bears on the proper theme of this work — 

 Temperance Reform. The answer is easy. Only 

 the great procreation fetish, on which I have dwelt 

 so long, hinders national temperance legislation. 

 Under threat of social and material ruin con- 

 demnation of the fetish is tapu. But all men think 

 largely of it, and most thinking men condemn it, 

 and it is to thinking men I have appealed in my 

 attempt to demonstrate the manifold evils which 

 flow from a conspiracy of silence. The same men 

 or class of men who railed against Malthus, who 

 opposed the introduction of chloroform, who decree 

 the death in torture of the parturient mother, who 

 call for human sacrifice on a vast scale through the 

 medium of venereal disease, the same men, the 

 same fanaticism, the same degraded fetish worship 

 I say, render rational temperance legislation 

 impossible for the time being. But for the time 

 being only. To-morrow may see,' I think is sure 

 to see, the dawn of a brighter day. 



