Malthusians

Toward the end of the 18th Century, a country gentleman of Surrey, England, used to argue with his son concerning the perfectability of society. Quoting his optimistic French friend. Jean Jacques Rousseau, the father would say: "Liberty, equality, fraternity." The son. whose name was the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus, would reply, amiably enough: "Pish-posh! Very pretty. But society will never be happy so long as it permits itself to multiply more rapidly than its means of sustinence." Impressed by his son's views, Malthus Sr. encouraged Malthus Jr. to pen An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society. Published, elaborated in revision, this essay became widely known as the Malthusian Doctrine of Population, sneered .by economists, shunned by purists through the prosperous and socially restful 19th Century.

In 1877, following the trial and acquittal of one Annie Besant and one Charles Bradlaugh for distributing birth control literature, a Neo-Malthusian League was formed in London. A quarter of a century later, the first Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference was held in Paris, repeated at Liege, in 1901; The Hague, 1910; Dresden, 1911; London, 1922.

Last week, a sixth conference met in Manhattan. Some 600 delegates, several from foreign countries, told one another how birth control was faring.

Mrs. Margaret Sanger, President of the League in the U. S., declared that her country was going ''on a biological joyride"; that the Government might better expend the millions now paid out for charities in bonuses to morons, criminals and imbeciles who refrain from bearing offspring.

Dr. C. V. Drysdale of the University of London, President of the Conference, hailed Mrs. Sanger as "the Joan of Arc and the Florence Nightingale of the birth-control movement."

A message from G. B. Shaw said: "As the amoeba does not understand birth control, it cannot abuse it and therefore its state may be the more gracious ; but it is also true that, as the amoeba cannot write, it cannot commit forgery; yet we teach everybody to write unhesitatingly, knowing that if we refuse to teach anything that could be abused, we should never teach anything at all."

Other scientists and sociologists spoke, some cautiously, some daringly. A British doctor went so far as to advocate, and predict, not only the general adoption of contraceptive practices, but even the killing of defective babies at birth. An insurance statistician, Dr. Louis I. Dublin of Manhattan, was invited to present opposite views. He did so. declaring the population rise of the U. S. was no menace; indeed, the birth rate of the native population was steadily decreasing. He suggested that U. S. birth controllers bend their energies toward encouraging larger families among the well-to-do.

"Today birth-control argument centres about the proposals that women should be taught to avoid pregnancy and that abortion should be legalized." Points usually made are: Pro:

1) There would be no unwanted children.

2) Weak and diseased women would have relief.

3) Timely children are likely to be more healthy than untimely.

4) Limiting the number of children among the poor safeguards not only the family's, but the children's opportunity in the world.

5) Overpopulation would be prevented, thus avoiding high death rates, starvation, poverty, war.

Con:

1) Immorality would be encouraged.

2) It would be virtually murder; at the least, immoral interference with natural processes.

3) It could not prevent overpopulation because: a) By its nature it could never be made compulsory; b) aside from those refusing to adopt it for religious and moral reasons, the mentally incompetent would not appreciate its necessity.

4) It would tend to reduce the intelligent portion of society while the unintelligent portion, refusing to practise it, would continue to multiply.

5) Without population pressure, the natural selection of the fit and the elimination of the unfit would cease.

An English representative to the Manhattan conference stated that, in England, organized opposition to birth control had ceased entirely except for the activity of the Roman Catholic Church. In the U. S., more than one group is actively opposed, though birth control is practised by the wealthy.

Mrs. Sanger. During the 19th Century, a scattering of scientists abroad kept alive the ideas of Malthus. In 1873, the U. S. Congress barkened to Anthony Comstock, professional purist, passed a law barring from the mails all birth control literature. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, Evangelist Robert Ingersoll spoke out in favor of birth control, but the U. S. had small part in the movement until 1912. In that year, the American Medical Association declared for hygienic contraception, and Mrs. Margaret Sanger, a visiting nurse in Manhattan's East Side slums, began to lead the movement.

Mrs. Sanger went to France, studied practical methods.

In 1915, she announced a public campaign, was indicted for sending her pamphlets through the mail. Successful pleas for intervention were made to President Wilson, by British writers (H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett included), but, the next year Mrs. Sanger was arrested for operating a birth-control clinic in Brooklyn.

Her mission in the U. S. Mrs. Sanger describes thus : "For the establishment of free clinics in every large centre of population, so that scientific individual information may be given to every adult."

The Significance of last week's conference was thought by many to lie in the fact that, whereas the police closed Mrs. Sanger's Brooklyn clinic nine years ago, broke up a meeting in the Town Hall four years ago, this year no interference whatever was offered the delegates. Birth control, it seemed, was passing "out of the police court, into the drawing-room,"