Woman and the New Race | Page 2

let this book be read; let it be read by every man and woman who can read. And the sooner it is not only read but acted on, the better for the world.
HAVELOCK ELLIS.
* * * * * *
CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I WOMAN'S ERROR AND HER DEBT
II WOMAN'S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM
III THE MATERIAL OF THE NEW RACE
IV TWO CLASSES OF WOMEN
V THE WICKEDNESS OP CREATING LARGE FAMILIES
VI CRIES OF DESPAIR
VII WHEN SHOULD A WOMAN AVOID HAVING CHILDREN?
VIII BIRTH CONTROL--A PARENTS' PROBLEM OR WOMAN'S?
IX CONTINENCE--IS IT PRACTICABLE OR DESIRABLE?
X CONTRACEPTIVES OR ABORTION?
XI ARE PREVENTIVE MEANS CERTAIN?
XII WILL BIRTH CONTROL HELP THE CAUSE OF LABOR?
XIII BATTALIONS OF UNWANTED BABIES THE CAUSE OF WAR
XIV WOMAN AND THE NEW MORALITY
XV LEGISLATING WOMAN'S MORALS
XVI WHY NOT BIRTH CONTROL CLINICS IN AMERICA?
XVII PROGRESS WE HAVE MADE
XVIII THE GOAL
* * * * * *
WOMAN AND THE NEW RACE
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
WOMAN'S ERROR AND HER DEBT
The most far-reaching social development of modern times is the revolt of woman against sex servitude. The most important force in the remaking of the world is a free motherhood. Beside this force, the elaborate international programmes of modern statesmen are weak and superficial. Diplomats may formulate leagues of nations and nations may pledge their utmost strength to maintain them, statesmen may dream of reconstructing the world out of alliances, hegemonies and spheres of influence, but woman, continuing to produce explosive populations, will convert these pledges into the proverbial scraps of paper; or she may, by controlling birth, lift motherhood to the plane of a voluntary, intelligent function, and remake the world. When the world is thus remade, it will exceed the dream of statesman, reformer and revolutionist.
Only in recent years has woman's position as the gentler and weaker half of the human family been emphatically and generally questioned. Men assumed that this was woman's place; woman herself accepted it. It seldom occurred to anyone to ask whether she would go on occupying it forever.
Upon the mere surface of woman's organized protests there were no indications that she was desirous of achieving a fundamental change in her position. She claimed the right of suffrage and legislative regulation of her working hours, and asked that her property rights be equal to those of the man. None of these demands, however, affected directly the most vital factors of her existence. Whether she won her point or failed to win it, she remained a dominated weakling in a society controlled by men.
Woman's acceptance of her inferior status was the more real because it was unconscious. She had chained herself to her place in society and the family through the maternal functions of her nature, and only chains thus strong could have bound her to her lot as a brood animal for the masculine civilizations of the world. In accepting her r?le as the "weaker and gentler half," she accepted that function. In turn, the acceptance of that function fixed the more firmly her rank as an inferior.
Caught in this "vicious circle," woman has, through her reproductive ability, founded and perpetuated the tyrannies of the Earth. Whether it was the tyranny of a monarchy, an oligarchy or a republic, the one indispensable factor of its existence was, as it is now, hordes of human beings--human beings so plentiful as to be cheap, and so cheap that ignorance was their natural lot. Upon the rock of an unenlightened, submissive maternity have these been founded; upon the product of such a maternity have they flourished.
No despot ever flung forth his legions to die in foreign conquest, no privilege-ruled nation ever erupted across its borders, to lock in death embrace with another, but behind them loomed the driving power of a population too large for its boundaries and its natural resources.
No period of low wages or of idleness with their want among the workers, no peonage or sweatshop, no child-labor factory, ever came into being, save from the same source. Nor have famine and plague been as much "acts of God" as acts of too prolific mothers. They, also, as all students know, have their basic causes in over-population.
The creators of over-population are the women, who, while wringing their hands over each fresh horror, submit anew to their task of producing the multitudes who will bring about the next tragedy of civilization.
While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes, furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.
Woman's passivity under the burden of her disastrous task was almost altogether that of ignorant resignation. She knew virtually nothing about