What do the people want? No doubt the first conscious want of most people so far as birth control is concerned, is simple reliable information about methods. It is largely their own needs and wants which have made people pay attention to and develop the birth control movement, or realize just how the laws forbid their getting what they want. On the latter point they are apt to be much more vague than on the former. Some people, and unfortunately they are numerous, having managed to get what they want in spite of the laws, are prone to forget the plight of others who are not sophisticated enough or lucky enough to be successful law-breakers, and thus they feel little direct responsibility about getting the laws revamped so that they shall not stand in the way of any one who needs access to the information. But on the whole, these careless and self-centered people would, if they stopped to think about it, agree with those who have a heart for others and are public spirited, and they too would prefer decent, just and practicable laws to those which are dirty-minded, unjust and unenforceable. Suppose a real conference of the whole people were possible, and they could put their minds on deciding what laws they wanted on this subject, after looking over the statutes we have now, and after scrutinizing all the proposals that have been made for revising them, what sort of a decision would they be likely to make? What would their conclusion be, if left entirely to their own devices, with no “experts” to tell them what to say, and with the whole responsibility on their own shoulders? They would doubtless be deficient in putting their ideas into legal phraseology—the technician might have to be called on for that; but would they be likely to vote any sort of suppression or restrictions upon themselves? Is there any precedent in history for a body of people ever doing that? Have people ever united to express their lack of faith in themselves and said, “Let us have laws to keep us from knowing this and that, as we can not trust ourselves to use the knowledge rightly”? On the contrary, whenever people unite in demands _for themselves_, are those demands not always for freedom rather than for repression? But since a United States town-meeting on this subject is a wild hypothesis, perhaps the next best thing would be for the reader to look upon himself as the one person upon whom the answer to this question rested—with the responsible knowledge that whatever he really wanted would forthwith become the law of the land; and realizing also that what he basically wants is, probably ten to one, what most everybody else wants too.