Alarming that no one has pointed out what Margaret Sanger said in her address to the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian & Birth Control Conference
...the Government of the United States deliberately encourages and even makes necessary by its laws the breeding--with a breakneck rapidity -- of idiots, defectives, diseased, feeble-minded and criminal classes.
Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation of these classes Year by year their numbers are mounting. Year by year more money is expended. The American public is taxed--heavily taxed--to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization. More than one-quarter of the total incomes of our States is spent upon the maintenance of asylums, prisons and other institutions for the care of the defective, the diseased and the delinquent. Do not conclude, however, that all of our feeble-minded and mentally defective are segregated in institutions. No, indeed. This is a free country, a democratic country, a country of universal suffrage. We can all vote, even the mentally arrested. And so it is no surprise to find the moron's vote as good as the vote of the genius. The outlook is not a cheerful one.
You, friends from foreign countries who have come here to our greatest city, must have noticed the intricate system of signals which regulates the crowded traffic in our streets and thoroughfares. By this system, the pedestrian is assured some degree of safety. But while the congestion of American population in our cities has forced upon us a system to regulate traffic in city streets and country roads, America as a nation refuses to open her eyes to the problem of biological traffic and racial roads. Biologically, this country is joy-riding" with reckless carelessness to an inevitable smash-up. It is too late to prevent national destruction? This question we must face--and answer.
France is making a vain attempt to increase her population by awarding bonuses to those parents who will produce large families. The day is here when the Government of the United States should award bonuses to discourage large families. If the United States government were to expend some of its vast appropriations on a system of bonuses to decrease or restrict the incessant and uninterrupted advent of the hordes of the unfit, we might look forward to the future of this country with less pessimism. If the millions upon millions of dollars which are now expended in the care and maintenance of those who in all kindness should never have been brought into this world were converted to a system of bonuses to unfit parents, paying them to refrain from further parenthood, and continuing to pay them while they controlled their procreative faculties, this would not only be a profitable investment, but the salvation of American civilization. If we could, by such a system of awards or bribes or whatever you choose to call it, discourage the reproduction of the obviously unfit, we should be lightening the economic and social burden now hindering the progress of the fit, and taking the first sensible step toward teh solution of the most menacing problems of the American democracy.
This published in the Birth Control Review Vol. IX April, 1925, no. 43
Billions of dollars are expended by our state and federal governments and by private charities and philanthropies for the care, the maintenance, and the perpetuation of these classes Year by year their numbers are mounting. Year by year more money is expended. The American public is taxed--heavily taxed--to maintain an increasing race of morons which threatens the very foundations of our civilization. More than one-quarter of the total incomes of our States is spent upon the maintenance of asylums, prisons and other institutions for the care of the defective, the diseased and the delinquent. Do not conclude, however, that all of our feeble-minded and mentally defective are segregated in institutions. No, indeed. This is a free country, a democratic country, a country of universal suffrage. We can all vote, even the mentally arrested. And so it is no surprise to find the moron's vote as good as the vote of the genius. The outlook is not a cheerful one.
You, friends from foreign countries who have come here to our greatest city, must have noticed the intricate system of signals which regulates the crowded traffic in our streets and thoroughfares. By this system, the pedestrian is assured some degree of safety. But while the congestion of American population in our cities has forced upon us a system to regulate traffic in city streets and country roads, America as a nation refuses to open her eyes to the problem of biological traffic and racial roads. Biologically, this country is joy-riding" with reckless carelessness to an inevitable smash-up. It is too late to prevent national destruction? This question we must face--and answer.
France is making a vain attempt to increase her population by awarding bonuses to those parents who will produce large families. The day is here when the Government of the United States should award bonuses to discourage large families. If the United States government were to expend some of its vast appropriations on a system of bonuses to decrease or restrict the incessant and uninterrupted advent of the hordes of the unfit, we might look forward to the future of this country with less pessimism. If the millions upon millions of dollars which are now expended in the care and maintenance of those who in all kindness should never have been brought into this world were converted to a system of bonuses to unfit parents, paying them to refrain from further parenthood, and continuing to pay them while they controlled their procreative faculties, this would not only be a profitable investment, but the salvation of American civilization. If we could, by such a system of awards or bribes or whatever you choose to call it, discourage the reproduction of the obviously unfit, we should be lightening the economic and social burden now hindering the progress of the fit, and taking the first sensible step toward teh solution of the most menacing problems of the American democracy.
This published in the Birth Control Review Vol. IX April, 1925, no. 43
Comments