When I had been in Glasgow before, I had encountered only officials, but on this occasion I met the people in their homes and found them quite opposite to the stingy, tight-fisted, middle-class stereotype. They were hospitable, generous, mentally alert, just as witty as the Irish and in much the same way, which rather surprised me. Fourth of July, Sunday, we had a noon meeting on the Glasgow Green. Nearly two thousand shipyard workers in caps and baggy corduroys stood close together listening in utter, dead stillness without cough or whisper. That evening I spoke in a hall under Socialist auspices, Guy Aldred acting as chairman. One old-timer said he had been a party member for eleven years, attending Sunday night lectures regularly, but never before had he been able to induce his wife to come; tonight he could not keep her home. “Look!” he cried in amazement. “The women have crowded the men out of this hall. I never saw so many wives of comrades before.” The men were there, partly through curiosity to hear the American and partly through interest in the subject, ready to fight the ancient battle of Marx against Malthus. Efforts of the English Neo-Malthusians to introduce birth control to the masses had been hampered not only by the opposition of the upper classes, but more especially by the persistent hostility of the orthodox Socialists. Marx, dealing with problems after they had arisen, had taught that any reform likely to dull the edge of poverty was bad for Socialism because it made labor less dissatisfied. It followed that if a man had to fight for the hungers and necessities of ten or twelve children, he made a better revolutionary. “Let ’em have as many as they can,” was the cry. On the other hand, if birth control were practiced by the working classes, the wage earner who could support two children and knew how not to have more was going to be content and would not struggle against conditions of economic insecurity. Hence he was likely to forget “the Revolution.” Knowing that the Scotch took mental notes of items on which to debate, I had tried to prepare myself well, and I produced the unanswerable argument to this theory. “Why do you demand higher wages then,” I asked, “when what you really want is privation? If misery is your weapon you should not insist on an eight-hour day but on a twelve- or fourteen-hour one. You should pile up your grievances, and pile them up higher. However, in spite of your best efforts I believe your hunger-revolution will, as it has always done, capitulate to whatever force or government will fill your stomachs.” Socialists, like anarchists and syndicalists, were used to contesting Malthusianism on economic grounds, but, unlike the others, they had as a part of their platform the freedom of woman. I pointed out that she could have the sort of freedom they desired for her right here and now through birth control.