The Pivot of Civilization | Page 9

and sustained by the most reactionary and sinister forces in
American life. It was not inertia or any lack of interest on the part of
the masses that stood in our way. It was the indifference of the
intellectual leaders.
Writers, teachers, ministers, editors, who form a class dictating, if not
creating, public opinion, are, in this country, singularly inhibited or
unconscious of their true function in the community. One of their first
duties, it is certain, should be to champion the constitutional right of
free speech and free press, to welcome any idea that tends to awaken
the critical attention of the great American public. But those who reveal
themselves as fully cognizant of this public duty are in the minority,
and must possess more than average courage to survive the enmity such
an attitude provokes.

One of the chief aims of the present volume is to stimulate American
intellectuals to abandon the mental habits which prevent them from
seeing human nature as a whole, instead of as something that can be
pigeonholed into various compartments or classes. Birth Control
affords an approach to the study of humanity because it cuts through
the limitations of current methods. It is economic, biological,
psychological and spiritual in its aspects. It awakens the vision of
mankind moving and changing, of humanity growing and developing,
coming to fruition, of a race creative, flowering into beautiful
expression through talent and genius.
As a social programme, Birth Control is not merely concerned with
population questions. In this respect, it is a distinct step in advance of
earlier Malthusian doctrines, which concerned themselves chiefly with
economics and population. Birth Control concerns itself with the spirit
no less than the body. It looks for the liberation of the spirit of woman
and through woman of the child. To-day motherhood is wasted,
penalized, tortured. Children brought into the world by unwilling
mother suffer an initial handicap that cannot be measured by cold
statistics. Their lives are blighted from the start. To substantiate this
fact, I have chosen to present the conclusions of reports on Child Labor
and records of defect and delinquency published by organizations with
no bias in favour of Birth Control. The evidence is before us. It crowds
in upon us from all sides. But prior to this new approach, no attempt
had been made to correlate the effects of the blind and irresponsible
play of the sexual instinct with its deep- rooted causes.
The duty of the educator and the intellectual creator of public opinion is,
in this connection, of the greatest importance. For centuries official
moralists, priests, clergymen and teachers, statesmen and politicians
have preached the doctrine of glorious and divine fertility. To-day, we
are confronted with the world-wide spectacle of the realization of this
doctrine. It is not without significance that the moron and the imbecile
set the pace in living up to this teaching, and that the intellectuals, the
educators, the archbishops, bishops, priests, who are most insistent on it,
are the staunchest adherents in their own lives of celibacy and
non-fertility. It is time to point out to the champions of unceasing and
indiscriminate fertility the results of their teaching.
One of the greatest difficulties in giving to the public a book of this

type is the impossibility of keeping pace with the events and changes of
a movement that is now, throughout the world, striking root and
growing. The changed attitude of the American Press indicates that
enlightened public opinion no longer tolerates a policy of silence upon
a question of the most vital importance. Almost simultaneously in
England and America, two incidents have broken through the prejudice
and the guarded silence of centuries. At the church Congress in
Birmingham, October 12, 1921, Lord Dawson, the king's physician, in
criticizing the report of the Lambeth Conference concerning Birth
Control, delivered an address defending this practice. Of such bravery
and eloquence that it could not be ignored, this address electrified the
entire British public. It aroused a storm of abuse, and yet succeeded, as
no propaganda could, in mobilizing the forces of progress and
intelligence in the support of the cause.
Just one month later, the First American Birth Control Conference
culminated in a significant and dramatic incident. At the close of the
conference a mass meeting was scheduled in the Town Hall, New York
City, to discuss the morality of Birth Control. Mr. Harold Cox, editor of
the Edinburgh Review, who had come to New York to attend the
conference, was to lead the discussion. It seemed only natural for us to
call together scientists, educators, members of the medical profession,
and theologians of all denominations, to ask their opinion upon this
uncertain and important phase of the controversy. Letters were sent to
eminent men and women in different parts of the