The Pivot of Civilization | Page 7

came into
intimate contact with the women and children. We saw that in the final
analysis the real burden of economic and industrial warfare was thrust
upon the frail, all-too- frail shoulders of the children, the very
babies--the coming generation. In their wan faces, in their
undernourished bodies, would be indelibly written the bitter defeat of
their parents.
The eloquence of those who led the underpaid and half-starved workers
could no longer, for me, at least, ring with conviction. Something more
than the purely economic interpretation was involved. The bitter
struggle for bread, for a home and material comfort, was but one phase

of the problem. There was another phase, perhaps even more
fundamental, that had been absolutely neglected by the adherents of the
new dogmas. That other phase was the driving power of instinct, a
power uncontrolled and unnoticed. The great fundamental instinct of
sex was expressing itself in these ever-growing broods, in the
prosperity of the slum midwife and her colleague the slum undertaker.
In spite of all my sympathy with the dream of liberated Labor, I was
driven to ask whether this urging power of sex, this deep instinct, was
not at least partially responsible, along with industrial injustice, for the
widespread misery of the world.
To find an answer to this problem which at that point in my experience
I could not solve, I determined to study conditions in Europe. Perhaps
there I might discover a new approach, a great illumination. Just before
the outbreak of the war, I visited France, Spain, Germany and Great
Britain. Everywhere I found the same dogmas and prejudices among
labor leaders, the same intense but limited vision, the same insistence
upon the purely economic phases of human nature, the same belief that
if the problem of hunger were solved, the question of the women and
children would take care of itself. In this attitude I discovered, then,
what seemed to me to be purely masculine reasoning; and because it
was purely masculine, it could at best be but half true. Feminine insight
must be brought to bear on all questions; and here, it struck me, the
fallacy of the masculine, the all-too- masculine, was brutally exposed. I
was encouraged and strengthened in this attitude by the support of
certain leaders who had studied human nature and who had reached the
same conclusion: that civilization could not solve the problem of
Hunger until it recognized the titanic strength of the sexual instinct. In
Spain, I found that Lorenzo Portet, who was carrying on the work of
the martyred Francisco Ferrer, had reached this same conclusion. In
Italy, Enrico Malatesta, the valiant leader who was after the war to play
so dramatic a r™le, was likewise combating the current dogma of the
orthodox Socialists. In Berlin, Rudolph Rocker was engaged in the
thankless task of puncturing the articles of faith of the orthodox
Marxian religion. It is quite needless to add that these men who had
probed beneath the surface of the problem and had diagnosed so much
more completely the complex malady of contemporary society were
intensely disliked by the superficial theorists of the neo-Marxian

School.
The gospel of Marx had, however, been too long and too thoroughly
inculcated into the minds of millions of workers in Europe, to be
discarded. It is a flattering doctrine, since it teaches the laborer that all
the fault is with someone else, that he is the victim of circumstances,
and not even a partner in the creation of his own and his child's misery.
Not without significance was the additional discovery that I made. I
found that the Marxian influence tended to lead workers to believe that,
irrespective of the health of the poor mothers, the earning capacity of
the wage-earning fathers, or the upbringing of the children, increase of
the proletarian family was a benefit, not a detriment to the
revolutionary movement. The greater the number of hungry mouths,
the emptier the stomachs, the more quickly would the ``Class War'' be
precipitated. The greater the increase in population among the
proletariat, the greater the incentive to revolution. This may not be
sound Marxian theory; but it is the manner in which it is popularly
accepted. It is the popular belief, wherever the Marxian influence is
strong. This I found especially in England and Scotland. In speaking to
groups of dockworkers on strike in Glasgow, and before the communist
and co- operative guilds throughout England, I discovered a prevailing
opposition to the recognition of sex as a factor in the perpetuation of
poverty. The leaders and theorists were immovable in their opposition.
But when once I succeeded in breaking through the surface opposition
of the rank and file of the workers, I found that they were willing to
recognize the power of this neglected factor in